Eliminating spin contamination in auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo: Realistic potential energy curve of F2

The Journal of Chemical Physics

Krakauer

2009

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114

We show that the recently developed phaseless auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo (AFQMC) method can be used to study excited states, providing an alternative to standard quantum chemistry methods. The phaseless AFQMC approach, whose computational cost scales as M 3 -M 4 with system size M , has been shown to be among the most accurate many-body methods in ground state calculations. For excited states, prevention of collapse into the ground state and control of the Fermion sign/phase problem are accomplished by the approximate phaseless constraint with a trial wave function. Using the challenging C2 molecule as a test case, we calculate the potential energy curves of the ground and two low-lying singlet excited states. The trial wave function is obtained by truncating complete active space wave functions, with no further optimization. The phaseless AFQMC results using a small basis set are in good agreement with exact full configuration interaction calculations, while those using large basis sets are in good agreement with experimental spectroscopic constants.

“…18, does not yield significant improvements to either AFQMC/UHF or AFQMC/UHF2. This indicates that these |Φ r are themselves poor.…”

Section: A Comparison With Benchmark Fci Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Computational Detailsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Excited state calculations using phaseless auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo: Potential energy curves of low-lying C2 singlet states

Purwanto

The Journal of Chemical Physics

Krakauer

2009

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114

“…We use a spinprojection technique [94] in AFQMC to minimize such effects. In this scheme, the walkers are initialized with a restricted open-shell HF determinant, which is an eigenfunction ofŜ 2 , such that propagation with e…”

Section: Computational Detailsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Chemical Transformations Approaching Chemical Accuracy via Correlated Sampling in Auxiliary-Field Quantum Monte Carlo

Shee

J. Chem. Theory Comput.

Reichman

et al. 2017

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The exact and phaseless variants of Auxiliary-Field Quantum Monte Carlo (AFQMC) have been shown to be capable of producing accurate ground-state energies for a wide variety of systems including those which exhibit substantial electron correlation effects. The computational cost of performing these calculations has to date been relatively high, impeding many important applications of these approaches. Here we present a correlated sampling methodology for AFQMC which relies on error cancellation to dramatically accelerate the calculation of energy differences of relevance to chemical transformations. In particular, we show that our correlated sampling-based AFQMC approach is capable of calculating redox properties, deprotonation free-energies, and hydrogen abstraction energies in an efficient manner without sacrificing accuracy. We validate the computational protocol by calculating the ionization potentials and electron affinities of the atoms contained in the G2 Test Set, and then proceed to utilize a composite method, which treats fixedgeometry processes with correlated sampling-based AFQMC and relaxation energies via MP2, to compute the ionization potential, deprotonation free-energy, and the O-H bond disocciation energy of methanol, all to within chemical accuracy. We show that the efficiency of correlated sampling relative to uncorrelated calculations increases with system and basis set size, and that correlated sampling greatly reduces the required number of random walkers to achieve a target statistical error. This translates to CPU-time speed-up factors of 55, 25, and 24 for the the ionization potential of the K atom, the deprotonation of methanol, and hydrogen abstraction from the O-H bond of methanol, respectively. We conclude with a discussion of further efficiency improvements that may open the door to the accurate description of chemical processes in complex systems.

“…This leads to significant errors in ph-AFQMC/UHF and long imaginary-time equilibration times. 37 The AFQMC/CAS approach, on the other hand, becomes increasingly expensive as the atoms are stretched from the equilibrium geometry, because the number of the required determinants in Ψ T grows rapidly. (At 2.0Å, for example, a 92% cut retains ∼ 1800 determinants.)…”

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An auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo study of the chromium dimer

Purwanto

The Journal of Chemical Physics

Krakauer

2015

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The chromium dimer (Cr2) presents an outstanding challenge for many-body electronic structure methods. Its complicated nature of binding, with a formal sextuple bond and an unusual potential energy curve, is emblematic of the competing tendencies and delicate balance found in many strongly correlated materials. We present a nearexact calculation of the potential energy curve (PEC) and ground state properties of Cr2, using the auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo (AFQMC) method. Unconstrained, exact AFQMC calculations are first carried out for a medium-sized but realistic basis set. Elimination of the remaining finite-basis errors and extrapolation to the complete basis set (CBS) limit is then achieved with a combination of phaseless and exact AFQMC calculations. Final results for the PEC and spectroscopic constants are in excellent agreement with experiment. The chromium dimer is a strongly correlated molecule which poses a formidable challenge to even the most accurate many-body methods. It features a formal sextuple bond, with a weak binding energy (∼ 1.5 eV), a short equilibrium bond length (∼ 1.7Å), and an unusual "shoulder" structure in its potential energy curve (PEC). [1][2][3] The ground state of Cr 2 is highly multiconfigurational, and proper theoretical description requires an accurate treatment of the strong 3d electron correlations (both static and dynamic). The nature of the PEC in Cr 2 is representative of the competing tendencies separated by small energy differences seen in many strongly correlated materials. Because of the fundamental and technological significance of such materials, improving our abilities for accurate calculations in strongly correlated systems is one of the most pressing needs in condensed matter physics and quantum chemistry.Standard quantum chemistry methods, such as density functional theory (DFT), Hartree-Fock (HF), and post-HF methods such as single-reference second-order Møller-Plesset perturbation theory (MP2) and single-reference coupled cluster with singles, doubles, and perturbative triples [CCSD(T)], all fail to describe the correct binding of Cr 2 . Representative standard quantum chemistry results are shown in Fig. 1. As often is the case, the DFT results vary greatly, depending on the choice of exchange-correlation functional. There have also been numerous attempts to calculate the PEC of Cr 2 using sophisticated multireference quantum chemistry methods, 4-9 including the complete active space second-order perturbation theory (CASPT2) 10-12 and, more recently, CASPT2 based on a large density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) reference wave function (DMRG-CASPT2). 13 These calculations obtain qualitatively correct binding, but the results are sensitive to choice of active space and/or basis set. Standard quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) approaches 14,15 have also been severely challenged. A recent fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) study, which examined the use of a variety of single-and multi-determinant trial wave functions, did not obtain satisfactory binding (i...