Hypernodal Quantum Monte Carlo

Prof.Dr. M.H.Kalos Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, U.S.A.

Mercredi23 juin 2004, 11h00

We propose a novel method for relaxing the nodal constraint of quantum Monte Carlo in a stable way. We consider a pair of walkers that diffuse in a higher-dimensional space, and construct a functional that vanishes if the trial functions are exact. Each walker can violate the original fixed-node constraint, but the pair is subject to a new constraint. Therefore it yields upper bounds to the electronic energy that are lower than those given by the existing fixed-node method while using the same trial function.