Quantum Chemistry via Walks in Determinant Space

Umrigar, Cyrus J.¹ 

[1] Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY (United States)

关键词: Quantum Monte Carlo methods;    electronic structure theory;   

DOI  :  10.2172/1233718
RP-ID  :  DOE_Cornell
PID  :  OSTI ID: 1233718

学科分类：材料科学（综合）

美国|英语

来源: SciTech Connect

【 摘 要 】

There are many chemical questions of practical interest to the DOE that could be answered if there were an electronic structure method that provided consistently accurate results for all systems at an affordable computational cost. The coupled cluster method with single, double and perturbative triple excitations (CCSD(T)) is the most frequently used high-order method, but it has known deficiencies, e.g., in the description of stretched bonds. The full configuration interaction (FCI) method is the most robust method for treating electronic correlations, but it is little used because its computational cost scales exponentially in the size of the system. The largest calculation that has been done to date employed 10 billion determinants. In this regard, there was a major advance in 2010. The Alavi group at Cambridge University developed a stochastic approach to FCI --- combining it with ideas from quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) --- called FCIQMC, that allows one to go to a far larger number of determinants in certain circumstances. The computational cost is exponential in the system and basis size but with a much reduced exponent compared to conventional FCI. In this project Umrigar's group made several major improvements to the FCIQMC method that increased its efficiency by many orders of magnitude. In addition this project resulted in a cross-fertilization of ideas between the FCIQMC method, the older phaseless auxilliary-field quantum Monte Carlo (AFQMC) method developed by Zhang and Krakauer (two of the PI's of this project), and symmetry-restored wavefunctions developed by Scuseria (also a PI of this project).