Coordinate Descent Full Configuration Interaction for Excited States

An efficient excited state method, named xCDFCI, in the configuration interaction framework is proposed. xCDFCI extends the unconstrained nonconvex optimization problem in coordinate descent full configuration interaction (CDFCI) to a multicolumn version for low-lying excited states computation. The optimization problem is addressed via a tailored coordinate descent method. In each iteration, a determinant is selected based on an approximated gradient, and coefficients of all states associated with the selected determinant are updated. A deterministic compression is applied to limit memory usage. We test xCDFCI applied to H2O and N-2 molecules under the cc-pVDZ basis set. For both systems, five low-lying excited states in the same symmetry sector are calculated, together with the ground state. xCDFCI also produces accurate binding curves of the carbon dimer in the cc-pVDZ basis with chemical accuracy, where the ground state and four excited states in the same symmetry sector are benchmarked.