Projected seniority-two orbital optimization of the antisymmetric product of one-reference orbital geminal

We present a new, non-variational orbital-optimization scheme for the antisymmetric product of one-reference orbital geminal wave function. Our approach is motivated by the observation that an orbital-optimized seniority-zero configuration interaction (CI) expansion yields similar results to an orbital-optimized seniority-zero-plus-two CI expansion [L. Bytautas, T. M. Henderson, C. A. Jimenez-Hoyos, J. K. Ellis, and G. E. Scuseria, J. Chem. Phys. 135, 044119 (2011)]. A numerical analysis is performed for the C2 and LiF molecules, for the CH2 singlet diradical as well as for the symmetric stretching of hypothetical (linear) hydrogen chains. For these test cases, the proposed orbital-optimization protocol yields similar results to its variational orbital optimization counterpart, but prevents symmetry-breaking of molecular orbitals in most cases.