Geometries, Binding Energies, Ionization Potentials, and Electron Affinities of Metal Clusters: Mgn0, ± 1, n = 1–7

Equilibrium geometries, binding energies, adiabatic ionization potentials, and adiabatic electron affinities for neutral and singly charged magnesium clusters, Mgn0, ± 1, n = 1–7, have been computed using 39 exchange-correlation (XC) functionals in Kohn–Sham density functional theory and several coupled-cluster methods with single, double, and triple excitations, including CCSD(T) for all species, CCSD(2)T and CR-CC(2,3) for species with n = 1–3, and CCSDt, CC(t;3), and CCSDT for species with n = 1 and 2. We have used augmented polarized–valence and polarized–core–valence correlation-consistent basis sets. We have found that the geometry and binding energy of the weakly bound Mg2 dimer requires a robust treatment of connected triple excitations, represented in this work by the CR-CC(2,3), CC(t;3), and full CCSDT methods, which are more accurate than the popular quasi-perturbative CCSD(T) approximation, but CCSD(T) is sufficiently accurate to be applied to other Mg clusters. We have also demonstrated that ...