Another Angle on Benchmarking Noncovalent Interactions

For noncovalent interactions (NCIs), the CCSD(T) coupled cluster method is widely regarded as the `gold standard'. With localized orbital approximations, benchmarks for ever larger NCI complexes are being published; yet tantalizing evidence from quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) results appears to indicate that as the system size grows, CCSD(T) overbinds NCIs by progressively larger amounts, particularly when $\pi$-stacking is involved. Alas, post-CCSD(T) methods like CCSDT(Q) are cost-prohibitive, which requires us to consider alternative means of estimating post-CCSD(T) contributions. In this work, we take a step back by considering the evolution of the correlation energy with respect to the number of subunits for such $\pi$-stacked sequences as acene dimers and alkadiene dimers. We show it to be almost perfectly linear, and propose the slope of the line as a probe for the behavior of a given electron correlation method. By comparison with rank-reduced CCSDT(Q) results for benzene and naphthalene dimers, we show that while CCSD(T) does slightly overbind, it does not at the level suggested by the QMC results.