Quantum Monte Carlo for atoms and molecules

The diffusion quantum Monte Carlo with fixed nodes (QMC) approach has been employed in studying energy eigenstates for 1 to 4 electron systems. Previous work employing the diffusion QMC technique yielded energies of high quality for H2, LiH, Li2, and H2O. Here, the range of calculations with this new approach has been extended to include additional first-row atoms and molecules. In addition, improvements in the previously computed fixed-node energies of LiH, Li2, and H2O have been obtained using more accurate trial functions. All computations were performed within, but are not limited to, the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. In our computations, the effects of variation of Monte Carlo parameters on the QMC solution of the Schroedinger equation were studied extensively. These parameters include the time step, renormalization time and nodal structure. These studies have been very useful in determining which choices of such parameters will yield accurate QMC energies most efficiently. Generally, very accurate energies (90 to 100 percent of the correlation energy is obtained) have been computed with single determinant trail functions multiplied by simple correlation functions. Improvements in accuracy should be readily obtained using more complex trial functions.