“Before closing this chapter, it is appropriate to review the different modes of correlation encountered in our description of electronic systems. Fermi correlation arises from the Pauli antisymmetry
of the wave function and is taken into account already at the Hartree-Fock level as discussed
in Section 5.2.8. Static correlation - also known as near-degeneracy or nondynamical correlation - arises from the near-degeneracy of electronic configurations and may at the simplest level
be described by MCSCF theory; see Section 5.2.10. Dynamical correlation, also introduced in
Section 5.2.10, is associated with the instantaneous correlation among the electrons arising from
their mutual repulsion and requires for its description a large number of electronic configurations.
It is often useful to distinguish between long-range dynamical correlation and short-range dynamical correlation, the latter related to the singularities in the Hamiltonian operator and giving rise
to the Coulomb cusp in the electronic wave function. Dynamical correlation is best accounted for
by perturbation theory or by coupled-cluster theory. Long-range dynamical correlation can usually
be adequately described by means of a relatively small number of determinants, whereas shortrange correlation is exceedingly difficult to account for and is perhaps best treated using explicitly
correlated methods, which go beyond the Fock-space description of molecular electronic structure”
Molecular Electron Structure theory, Chapter 7