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arXiv:1208.0980 · The Journal of Chemical Physics

An explicitly correlated approach to basis set incompleteness in full configuration interaction quantum Monte Carlo

George H. Booth, Deidre M. Cleland, Ali Alavi, David P. Tew

Published Oct 28, 2012• 60 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

By performing a stochastic dynamic in a space of Slater determinants, the full configuration interaction quantum Monte Carlo (FCIQMC) method has been able to obtain energies which are essentially free from systematic error to the basis set correlation energy, within small and systematically improvable error bars. However, the weakly exponential scaling with basis size makes converging the energy with respect to basis set costly and in larger systems, impossible. To ameliorate these basis set issues, here we use perturbation theory to couple the FCIQMC wavefunction to an explicitly correlated strongly orthogonal basis of geminals, following the [2](R12) approach of Valeev et al. The required one- and two-particle density matrices are computed on-the-fly during the FCIQMC dynamic, using a sampling procedure which incurs relatively little additional computation expense. The F12 energy corrections are shown to converge rapidly as a function of sampling, both in imaginary time and number of walkers. Our pilot calculations on the binding curve for the carbon dimer, which exhibits strong correlation effects as well as substantial basis set dependence, demonstrate that the accuracy of the FCIQMC-F12 method surpasses that of all previous FCIQMC calculations, and that the F12 correction improves results equivalent to increasing the quality of the one-electron basis by two cardinal numbers.

DOI
10.1063/1.4762445

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By performing a stochastic dynamic in a space of Slater determinants, the full configuration interaction quantum Monte Carlo (FCIQMC) method has been able to obtain energies which are essentially free from systematic error to the basis set correlation energy, within small and systematically improvable error bars. However, the weakly exponential scaling with basis size makes converging the energy with respect to basis set costly and in larger systems, impossible. To ameliorate these basis set issues, here we use perturbation theory to couple the FCIQMC wavefunction to an explicitly correlated strongly orthogonal basis of geminals, following the 2 approach of Valeev et al. The required one- and two-particle density matrices are computed on-the-fly during the FCIQMC dynamic, using a sampling procedure which incurs relatively little additional computation expense. The F12 energy corrections are shown to converge rapidly as a function of sampling, both in imaginary time and number of walkers. Our pilot calculations on the binding curve for the carbon dimer, which exhibits strong correlation effects as well as substantial basis set dependence, demonstrate that the accuracy of the FCIQMC-F12 method surpasses that of all previous FCIQMC calculations, and that the F12 correction improves results equivalent to increasing the quality of the one-electron basis by two cardinal numbers.
The full configuration interaction quantum Monte Carlo (FCIQMC) method, as well as its "initiator" extension (i-FCIQMC), is used to tackle the complex electronic structure of the carbon dimer across the entire dissociation reaction coordinate, as a prototypical example of a strongly correlated molecular system. Various basis sets of increasing size up to the large cc-pVQZ are used, spanning a fully accessible N-electron basis of over 10(12) Slater determinants, and the accuracy of the method is demonstrated in each basis set. Convergence to the FCI limit is achieved in the largest basis with only O[10(7)] walkers within random errorbars of a few tenths of a millihartree across the binding curve, and extensive comparisons to FCI, CCSD(T), MRCI, and CEEIS results are made where possible. A detailed exposition of the convergence properties of the FCIQMC methods is provided, considering convergence with elapsed imaginary time, number of walkers and size of the basis. Various symmetries which can be incorporated into the stochastic dynamic, beyond the standard abelian point group symmetry and spin polarisation are also described. These can have significant benefit to the computational effort of the calculations, as well as the ability to converge to various excited states. The results presented demonstrate a new benchmark accuracy in basis-set energies for systems of this size, significantly improving on previous state of the art estimates.
Full configuration interaction quantum Monte Carlo for accurate ab initio\textit{ab initio}ab initio nuclear structure calculations: algorithms and calculation details
Full configuration interaction quantum Monte Carlo (FCIQMC) is a stochastic many-body solver that has been widely applied to electronic, molecular, and condensed-matter systems. In this work we apply FCIQMC to ab initio\textit{ab initio}ab initio nuclear structure calculations using interactions derived from chiral effective field theory. We describe the algorithm in detail, including imaginary-time propagation, excitation generation, estimator choices, the initiator approximation with adaptive shift correction, and reduced-density-matrix (RDM) sampling. Benchmark calculations in small model spaces, where deterministic full configuration interaction (FCI) results are available, validate the stochastic calculation of energies, radii, and RDM-based pure estimators. For large model spaces, we analyze the residual finite-walker bias through systematic walker-number convergence and infinite-walker extrapolations. We also demonstrate that FCIQMC can be extended beyond ground-state calculations by computing the low-lying spectrum of 6^66Li.
We expand upon the recent semi-stochastic adaptation to full configuration interaction quantum Monte Carlo (FCIQMC). We present an alternate method for generating the deterministic space without a priori knowledge of the wave function and present stochastic efficiencies for a variety of both molecular and lattice systems. The algorithmic details of an efficient semi-stochastic implementation are presented, with particular consideration given to the effect that the adaptation has on parallel performance in FCIQMC. We further demonstrate the benefit for calculation of reduced density matrices in FCIQMC through replica sampling, where the semi-stochastic adaptation seems to have even larger efficiency gains. We then combine these ideas to produce explicitly correlated corrected FCIQMC energies for the beryllium dimer, for which stochastic errors on the order of wavenumber accuracy are achievable.
We present a new approach to calculate excited states with the full configuration interaction quantum Monte Carlo (FCIQMC) method. The approach uses a Gram-Schmidt procedure, instantaneously applied to the stochastically evolving distributions of walkers, to orthogonalize higher energy states against lower energy ones. It can thus be used to study several of the lowest-energy states of a system within the same symmetry. This additional step is particularly simple and computationally inexpensive, requiring only a small change to the underlying FCIQMC algorithm. No trial wave functions or partitioning of the space is needed. The approach should allow excited states to be studied for systems similar to those accessible to the ground-state method due to a comparable computational cost. As a first application, we consider the carbon dimer in basis sets up to quadruple-zeta quality and compare to existing results where available.
Highly accurate results for the homogeneous electron gas (HEG) have only been achieved to date within a diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) framework. Here, we introduce a recently developed stochastic technique, full configuration interaction quantum Monte Carlo (FCIQMC), which samples the exact wave function expanded in plane-wave Slater determinants. Despite the introduction of a basis-set incompleteness error, we obtain a finite-basis energy, which is significantly and variationally lower than any previously published work for the 54-electron HEG at rs{r}_{s}rs​ === 0.5 a.u., in a Hilbert space of 10108{10}^{108}10108 Slater determinants. At this value of rs{r}_{s}rs​, as well as of 1.0 a.u., we remove the remaining basis-set incompleteness error by extrapolation, yielding results comparable to state-of-the-art DMC backflow energies. In doing so, we demonstrate that it is possible to yield highly accurate results with the FCIQMC method in periodic systems.
Using the homogeneous electron gas (HEG) as a model, we investigate the sources of error in the "initiator" adaptation to full configuration interaction quantum Monte Carlo (i-FCIQMC), with a view to accelerating convergence. In particular, we find that the fixed-shift phase, where the walker number is allowed to grow slowly, can be used to effectively assess stochastic and initiator error. Using this approach we provide simple explanations for the internal parameters of an i-FCIQMC simulation. We exploit the consistent basis sets and adjustable correlation strength of the HEG to analyze properties of the algorithm, and present finite basis benchmark energies for N = 14 over a range of densities 0.5 ≤ r(s) ≤ 5.0 a.u. A single-point extrapolation scheme is introduced to produce complete basis energies for 14, 38, and 54 electrons. It is empirically found that, in the weakly correlated regime, the computational cost scales linearly with the plane wave basis set size, which is justifiable on physical grounds. We expect the fixed-shift strategy to reduce the computational cost of many i-FCIQMC calculations of weakly correlated systems. In addition, we provide benchmarks for the electron gas, to be used by other quantum chemical methods in exploring periodic solid state systems.