Expansion of multicenter Coulomb integrals in terms of two-center integrals

Abstract

Three- and four-center Coulomb integrals in the solid spherical harmonic Gaussian basis are solved by expansion in terms of two-center integrals. The two-electron Gaussian product rule, coupled with the addition theorem for solid spherical harmonics, reduces four-center Coulomb integrals into a linear combination of two-center Coulomb integrals and one-center overlap integrals. With this approach, three- and four-center Coulomb integrals can be reduced to the same form of two-center integrals. Resulting two-center Coulomb integrals can be further simplified into a simpler form, which can be related to the Boys function. Multi-center Coulomb integrals are solved hierarchically: simple two-center Coulomb integrals are used for calculation of more complicated two-center Coulomb integrals, which are used in the calculation of multicenter integrals.