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Amplitude determinant coupled cluster with pairwise doubles

Recently developed pair coupled cluster doubles (pCCD) theory successfully reproduces doubly occupied configuration interaction (DOCI) with mean field cost. However, the projective nature of pCCD makes the method non-variational and thus hard to improve systematically. As a variational alternative, we explore the idea of coupled-cluster-like expansions based on amplitude determinants and develop a specific theory similar to pCCD based on determinants of pairwise doubles. The new ansatz admits a variational treatment through Monte Carlo methods while remaining size-consistent and, crucially, polynomial cost. In the dissociations of LiH, HF, H2O and N2, the method performs very similarly to pCCD and DOCI, suggesting that coupled-cluster-like ansatzes and variational evaluation may not be mutually exclusive.