A worrisome failure of the CC2 coupled-cluster method when applied to ozone

The approximate coupled-cluster singles and doubles model CC2 is widely used for calculations of excited states in large molecules. We demonstrate a surprising failure of the CC2 geometry optimization of ozone, whereby the CC2 method predicts a barrierless, exothermic, and symmetric dissociation to three oxygen atoms. This is particularly astonishing since both second-order Møller–Plesset perturbation theory and coupled-cluster singles and doubles give reasonable equilibrium structures. We find that [ [ H , T 1 ] , T 1 ] leads to an unbalanced treatment of T 1 and T 2 in the CC2 equations. Results presented here suggest that considerable caution should be exercised when applying the CC2 model to systems with singlet biradical character.