Pair natural orbital and canonical coupled cluster reaction enthalpies involving light to heavy alkali and alkaline earth metals: The importance of sub-valence correlation

In this work, we tested canonical and domain based pair natural orbital coupled cluster methods (CCSD(T) and DLPNO-CCSD(T), respectively) for a set of 32 ligand exchange and association/dissociation reaction enthalpies involving ionic complexes of Li, Be, Na, Mg, Ca, Sr, Ba and Pb(ii). Two strategies were investigated: in the former, only valence electrons were included in the correlation treatment, giving rise to the computationally very efficient FC (frozen core) approach; in the latter, all non-ECP electrons were included in the correlation treatment, giving rise to the AE (all electron) approach. Apart from reactions involving Li and Be, the FC approach resulted in non-homogeneous performance. The FC approach leads to very small errors (