The ORCA Interface

Introduction

This interface supports energy and gradient evaluations with the ORCA electronic structure package.

Make sure that the ORCA directory is in your $PATH before using the ORCA interface.

Command Line Arguments

Method

Argument Argument type Mandatory Default To specify
hamiltonian keyword no HF Choice of QM Hamiltonian (currently hf and dft are supported).
functional keyword no undefined Choice of DFT functional.
gridsize integer no undefined DFT integration grid size (0-7). ORCA default is 2.
use_finalgrid Boolean no undefined Use "multigrid" feature (a larger integration grid for final energy and gradient evaluation). ORCA default is yes.
finalgridsize integer no undefined Final DFT integration grid size. ORCA default is 4.
use_ri Boolean no no Use RI approximation. If yes, an auxiliary basis set must be specified using auxbasis.
d3 Boolean no no Add Grimme's D3 dispersion correction.

Basis set

Argument Argument type Mandatory Default To specify
basis keyword no STO_3G Basis set (from the ORCA internal library). See note 1.
newgto Tcl List no undefined Additional basis sets for named atoms from the ORCA internal library.
Specify as { { Cu TZVPP } { ... } }.
basisspec Tcl List no undefined Basis set specification (using the ChemShell library)
ecpspec Tcl List no undefined ECP specification (using the ChemShell library)
auxbasis keyword no undefined Auxiliary basis set for the RI approximation.

SCF control

Argument Argument type Mandatory Default To specify
scftype keyword no RHF Wavefunction type (RHF, UHF, ROHF).
guess keyword no undefined Choice of initial guess, e.g. HCore, Hueckel, PAtom (ORCA default: PAtom). Ignored for restart calculations.
direct Boolean no yes Integral handling. If direct, recompute integrals at each iteration (rather than storing them on disk).
convergence keyword no NormalSCF SCF convergence criterion. (NormalSCF, StrongSCF, TightSCF etc. - see Orca manual)
maxcyc integer no undefined Number of SCF cycles permitted.

Molecule properties

Argument Argument type Mandatory Default To specify
charge integer no 0 Total charge (of QM system)
mult integer no 1 Multiplicity (spin state)

Excited state calculations

Argument Argument type Mandatory Default To specify
excited Boolean no no Perform an excited state calculation (CIS or TDDFT depending on the hamiltonian).
estate integer no 1 The excited state of interest (1 is the 1st excited state, etc.)
eroots integer no = estate Number of excitations to calculate. Only needs to be set if you want to calculate further states above estate (e.g. to avoid root flipping).
tda Boolean no yes Use the Tamm-Dancoff approximation (TDDFT only). See note 2.

General options

Argument Argument type Mandatory Default To specify
optstr string no undefined Additional ORCA input. Useful for specifying ORCA options not covered explicitly by this interface.
list_option Output keyword no medium How much output to generate
jobname string no orca1 Name to use as root for ORCA file names
restart Boolean no no Restart ORCA calculation from a previous wavefunction.
moinp string no save.gbw Name of a .gbw file to restart from (see note 3).
executable string no orca ORCA executable (see note 4).
version real no 4.0 ORCA version number. Used to determine how to specify basis sets (See note 1).
nproc integer no 1 Number of processors for parallel execution (see note 4).

Notes

  1. Basis sets should be specified using the format used in the "%basis" section of ORCA input files. As of ORCA v4.0, this is identical to basis keywords on the "simple input" line. To use the old format set the version option to e.g. 3.0. In this case some common basis set names are translated to the old format by the interface (see the orca.tcl file).
  2. ORCA's default is to use the Tamm-Dancoff approximation. As of v2.8 full TDDFT is not supported either for hybrid functionals or for gradient calculations with any functional.
  3. Do not specify moinp=$jobname.gbw. According to the ORCA v2.8 manual this will not work as $jobname.gbw will be overwritten on startup.
  4. If you run ORCA in parallel (using nproc) you must specify the full path to ORCA with the executable option.




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