5- and 6-membered rings: A natural orbital functional study

Abstract

The Global Natural Orbital Functional (GNOF) provides a straightforward approach to capture most electron correlation effects without needing perturbative corrections or limited active spaces selection. In this work, we evaluate both the original GNOF and its modified variant GNOFm on a set of twelve 5- and 6-membered molecular rings, systems characterized primarily by dynamic correlation. This reference set is vital as it comprises essential substructures of more complex molecules. We report complete-basis-set limit correlation energies for GNOF, GNOFm, and the benchmark CCSD(T) method. Across the Dunning basis sets, both functionals deliver a balanced and accurate description of the molecular set, with GNOFm showing small but systematic improvements while preserving the overall robustness of the original formulation. These results confirm the reliability of the GNOF family and its ability to capture dynamic correlation effects.