Amplitude Determinant Coupled Cluster with Pairwise Doubles

Density matrices of seniority-zero geminal wavefunctions

Scalar products and density matrix elements of closed-shell pair geminal wavefunctions are evaluated directly in terms of the pair amplitudes, resulting in an analog of Wick’s theorem for fermions or bosons. This expression is, in general, intractable, but it is shown how it becomes feasible in three distinct ways for Richardson–Gaudin (RG) states, the antisymmetrized geminal power, and the antisymmetrized product of strongly orthogonal geminals. Dissociation curves for hydrogen chains are computed with off-shell RG states and the antisymmetrized product of interacting geminals. Both are near exact, suggesting that the incorrect results observed with ground state RG states (a local maximum rather than smooth dissociation) may be fixable using a different RG state.

Quantum orbital-optimized unitary coupled cluster methods in the strongly correlated regime: Can quantum algorithms outperform their classical equivalents?

The Coupled Cluster (CC) method is used to compute the electronic correlation energy in atoms and molecules and often leads to highly accurate results. However, due to its single-reference nature, standard CC in its projected form fails to describe quantum states characterized by strong electronic correlations and multi-reference projective methods become necessary. On the other hand, quantum algorithms for the solution of many-electron problems have also emerged recently. The quantum unitary variant of CC (UCC) with singles and doubles (q-UCCSD) is a popular wavefunction Ansatz for the variational quantum eigensolver algorithm. The variational nature of this approach can lead to significant advantages compared to its classical equivalent in the projected form, in particular, for the description of strong electronic correlation. However, due to the large number of gate operations required in q-UCCSD, approximations need to be introduced in order to make this approach implementable in a state-of-the-art quantum computer. In this work, we evaluate several variants of the standard q-UCCSD Ansatz in which only a subset of excitations is included. In particular, we investigate the singlet and pair q-UCCD approaches combined with orbital optimization. We show that these approaches can capture the dissociation/distortion profiles of challenging systems, such as H₄, H₂O, and N₂ molecules, as well as the one-dimensional periodic Fermi-Hubbard chain. These results promote the future use of q-UCC methods for the solution of challenging electronic structure problems in quantum chemistry.

Polynomial-product states: A symmetry-projection-based factorization of the full coupled cluster wavefunction in terms of polynomials of double excitations

Our goal is to remedy the failure of symmetry-adapted coupled-cluster theory in the presence of strong correlation. Previous work along these lines has taken us from a diagram-level analysis of the coupled-cluster equations to an understanding of the collective modes which can occur in various channels of the coupled-cluster equations to the exploration of non-exponential wavefunctions in efforts to combine coupled-cluster theory with symmetry projection. In this manuscript, we extend these efforts by introducing a new, polynomial product wavefunction ansatz that incorporates information from symmetry projection into standard coupled-cluster theory in a way that attempts to mitigate the effects of the lack of size extensivity and size consistency characteristic of symmetry-projected methods. We describe the new approach in detail within the context of our previous efforts, explore some illustrative calculations, and consider one route for reducing the computational cost of the new method.

Pair 2-electron reduced density matrix theory using localized orbitals

Full configuration interaction (FCI) restricted to a pairing space yields size-extensive correlation energies but its cost scales exponentially with molecular size. Restricting the variational two-electron reduced-density-matrix (2-RDM) method to represent the same pairing space yields an accurate lower bound to the pair FCI energy at a mean-field-like computational scaling of O(r³) where r is the number of orbitals. In this paper, we show that localized molecular orbitals can be employed to generate an efficient, approximately size-extensive pair 2-RDM method. The use of localized orbitals eliminates the substantial cost of optimizing iteratively the orbitals defining the pairing space without compromising accuracy. In contrast to the localized orbitals, the use of canonical Hartree-Fock molecular orbitals is shown to be both inaccurate and non-size-extensive. The pair 2-RDM has the flexibility to describe the spectra of one-electron RDM occupation numbers from all quantum states that are invariant to time-reversal symmetry. Applications are made to hydrogen chains and their dissociation, n-acene from naphthalene through octacene, and cadmium telluride 2-, 3-, and 4-unit polymers. For the hydrogen chains, the pair 2-RDM method recovers the majority of the energy obtained from similar calculations that iteratively optimize the orbitals. The localized-orbital pair 2-RDM method with its mean-field-like computational scaling and its ability to describe multi-reference correlation has important applications to a range of strongly correlated phenomena in chemistry and physics.

Spin polynomial similarity transformation for repulsive Hamiltonians: interpolating between coupled cluster and spin-projected unrestricted Hartree–Fock

Our overarching goal is to be able to describe both weak and strong correlation with a single, computationally affordable method without sacrificing important qualities of the wavefunction, e.g. symmetries of the Hamiltonian.