Efficient optimization of low-rank antisymmetric product of geminals wavefunction using the direct Givens rotation method

Abstract

In our previous study [Kawasaki and Nakatani, Mol. Phys. 123(16), e2449186 (2025)], we proposed the low-rank antisymmetric product of geminals (APG) method, which reconstructs the wavefunction by extracting only the important eigenvalues from the APG wavefunction. However, its practical application was limited by the high computational cost from an orbital optimization process, making higher-rank calculations difficult. In this work, we reformulate the orbital part of the wavefunction using Givens rotation matrices, enabling an analytical treatment of the variational optimization. By combining the low-rank APG with the direct Givens rotation method, we achieved a significant improvement in optimization efficiency. We applied the developed method to small molecular systems and confirmed that it provides high accuracy, while also significantly reducing the computational time compared to conventional methods.