Accurate and interpretable representation of correlated electronic structure via Tensor Product Selected CI†

The task of computing wavefunctions that are accurate, yet simple enough mathematical objects to use for reasoning, has long been a challenge in quantum chemistry. The difficulty in drawing physical conclusions from a wavefunction is often related to the generally large number of configurations with similar weights. In Tensor Product Selected Configuration Interaction (TPSCI), we use a locally correlated tensor product state basis, which has the effect of concentrating the weight of a state onto a smaller number of physically interpretable degrees of freedom. In this paper, we apply TPSCI to a series of three molecular systems ranging in separability, one of which is the first application of TPSCI to an open-shell bimetallic system. For each of these systems, we obtain accurate solutions to large active spaces, and analyze the resulting wavefunctions through a series of different approaches including (i) direct inspection of the TPS basis coefficients, (ii) construction of Bloch effective Hamiltonians, and (iii) computation of cluster correlation functions.