Automatic Generation of Accurate and Cost-Efficient Auxiliary Basis Sets

[Image: see text] We have recently discussed an algorithm to automatically generate auxiliary basis sets (ABSs) of the standard form for density fitting (DF) or resolution-of-the-identity (RI) calculations in a given atomic orbital basis set (OBS) of any form, such as Gaussian-type orbitals, Slater-type orbitals, or numerical atomic orbitals [J. Chem. Theory Comput.2021, 17, 6886]. In this work, we study two ways to reduce the cost of such automatically generated ABSs without sacrificing their accuracy. We contract the ABS with a singular value decomposition proposed by Kállay [J. Chem. Phys.2014, 141, 244113], used here in a somewhat different setting. We also drop the high-angular momentum functions from the ABS, as they are unnecessary for global fitting methods. Studying the effect of these two types of truncations on Hartree–Fock (HF) and second-order Møller–Plesset perturbation theory (MP2) calculations on a chemically diverse set of first- and second-row molecules within the RI/DF approach, we show that accurate total and atomization energies can be achieved by a combination of the two approaches with significant reductions in the size of the ABS. While the original approach yields ABSs whose number of functions N(bf)(ABS) scales with the number of functions in the OBS, N(OBS)(bf), as N(ABS)(bf) = γN(OBS)(bf) with the prefactor [Image: see text], the reduction schemes of this work afford results of essentially the same quality as the original unpruned and uncontracted ABS with γ ≈ 5–6, while an accuracy that may suffice for routine applications is achievable with a further reduced ABS with γ ≈ 3–4. The observed errors are similar at HF and MP2 levels of theory, suggesting that the generated ABSs are highly transferable and can also be applied to model challenging properties with high-level methods.