Targeting Doubly Excited States with Equation of Motion Coupled Cluster Theory Restricted to Double Excitations

The accurate description of doubly excited states using conventional electronic structure methods is remarkably challenging, primarily because such excited states require the inclusion of doubly or higher excited configurations or the application of multireference methods. We present a new approach to target electronically excited states that feature a double-electron transfer. Our method uses the equation of motion (EOM) formalism with a pair coupled cluster doubles (pCCD) reference function, where dynamical correlation is accounted for by a linearized coupled cluster correction with singles and doubles (LCCSD). Specifically, our proposed EOM-pCCD-LCCSD model represents a simplification of the conventional EOM-CCSD approach, where the electron-pair amplitudes of CCSD are tailored by pCCD. The performance of EOM-pCCD-LCCSD is assessed for the lowest-lying excited states in CH⁺ and all-trans polyenes. In contrast to conventional EOM-CC methods with at most double excitations, EOM-pCCD-LCCSD predicts the right order of states in polyenes with excitation energies closest to experiment, outperforming even highly accurate methods such as the density matrix renormalization group algorithm.