Towards Correlated Sampling for the Fixed-Node Diffusion Quantum Monte Carlo Method

Most methods of quantum chemistry calculate total energies rather than directly the energy differences that are of interest to chemists. In the case of statistical methods like quantum Monte Carlo the statistical errors in the absolute values need to be considerably smaller than their difference. The calculation of small energy differences is therefore particularly time consuming. Correlated sampling techniques provide the possibility to compute directly energy differences by simulating the underlying systems with the same stochastic process. The smaller the energy difference the smaller its statistical error. Correlated sampling is well established in variational quantum Monte Carlo, but it is much more difficult to implement in diffusion quantum Monte Carlo because of the fixed node approximation. A correlated sampling formalism and a corresponding algorithm based on a transformed Schrodinger equation having the form of a Kolmogorov's backward equation is derived. The numerical verification of the presented algorithm is given for the harmonic oscillator. The extension of the algorithm to electron structure calculations is discussed.