Study of dispersion forces with Quantum Monte Carlo: toward a continuum model for solvation

We present a general method to compute dispersion interaction energy that, starting from London's interpretation, is based on the measure of the electronic electric field fluctuations, evaluated on electronic sampled configurations generated by quantum Monte Carlo. A damped electric field was considered in order to avoid divergence in the variance. Dispersion atom-atom C6 van der Waals coefficients were computed by coupling electric field fluctuations with static dipole polarizabilities. The dipole polarizability was evaluated at the diffusion Monte Carlo level by studying the response of the system to a constant external electric field. We extended the method to the calculation of the dispersion contribution to the free energy of solvation in the framework of the polarizable continuum model. We performed test calculations on pairs of some atomic systems. We considered He in ground and low lying excited states and Ne in the ground state and obtained a good agreement with literature data. We also made calculations on He, Ne, and F(-) in water as the solvent. Resulting dispersion contribution to the free energy of solvation shows the reliability of the method illustrated here

Low-lying Adiabatic Electronic States of NO: a QMC Study

Using Diffusion Monte Carlo in the fixed node approximation (FN-DMC) we have computed the electronic energy curves for some low lying doublet and quartet adiabatic states of NO. By starting with compact trial wave functions, we obtained accurate results in a wide range of internuclear distances. We have also been able to compute some spectroscopic properties and to interpret UV and visible absorption and emission spectra of NO in the gas phase by computing the Franck-Condon factors in the Born- Oppenheimer approximation. The comparison with available theoretical and experimental data is good.(doi: 10.5562/cca2302

Variational quantum Monte Carlo results for N2, N2+ and C2– utilising the four-dimensional density of Bright Wilson

Variational quantum Monte Carlo ground-state electron densities have first been obtained for N2 at its equilibrium bond length, as well for the isoelectronic ions N(Formula presented.) and C(Formula presented.) at the same bond length. These have been used to calculate the electrostatic potentials at the nucleus for all three species. Using the Bright Wilson four-dimensional density, the ground-state energy has thus been reproduced. For N2, also the Thomas–Fermi and the von Weizsäcker kinetic energies have been calculated

Electronic Excitations in Nonpolar Solvents: Can the Polarizable Continuum Model Accurately Reproduce Solvent Effects?

In nonpolar solvents, both electrostatic and nonelectrostatic interactions play a role in tuning the electronic excitations of molecular solutes. This specificity makes the application of continuum solvation models a challenge. Here, we propose a strategy for the calculation of solvatochromic shifts on absorption spectra, using a coupling of the polarizable continuum model with a time-dependent density functional theory framework, which explicitly accounts for dispersion and repulsion, as well as for electrostatic effects. Our analysis makes a step further in the interpretation of the effects of nonpolar solvents and suggests new directions in their modeling using continuum formulations

Localized Polycentric Orbital Basis Set for Quantum Monte Carlo Calculations Derived from the Decomposition of Kohn-Sham Optimized Orbitals

In this work, we present a simple decomposition scheme of the Kohn-Sham optimized orbitals which is able to provide a reduced basis set, made of localized polycentric orbitals, specifically designed for Quantum Monte Carlo. The decomposition follows a standard Density functional theory (DFT) calculation and is based on atomic connectivity and shell structure. The new orbitals are used to construct a compact correlated wave function of the Slater–Jastrow form which is optimized at the Variational Monte Carlo level and then used as the trial wave function for a final Diffusion Monte Carlo accurate energy calculation. We are able, in this way, to capture the basic information on the real system brought by the Kohn-Sham orbitals and use it for the calculation of the ground state energy within a strictly variational method. Here, we show test calculations performed on some small selected systems to assess the validity of the proposed approach in a molecular fragmentation, in the calculation of a barrier height of a chemical reaction and in the determination of intermolecular potentials. The final Diffusion Monte Carlo energies are in very good agreement with the best literature data within chemical accuracy

Introducing QMC/MMpol: Quantum Monte Carlo in Polarizable Force Fields for Excited States

We present for the first time a quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics scheme which combines quantum Monte Carlo with the reaction field of classical polarizable dipoles (QMC/MMpol). In our approach, the optimal dipoles are self-consistently generated at the variational Monte Carlo level and then used to include environmental effects in diffusion Monte Carlo. We investigate the performance of this hybrid model in describing the vertical excitation energies of prototypical small molecules solvated in water, namely, methylenecyclopropene and s-trans acrolein. Two polarization regimes are explored where either the dipoles are optimized with respect to the ground-state solute density (polGS) or different sets of dipoles are separately brought to equilibrium with the states involved in the electronic transition (polSS). By comparing with reference supermolecular calculations where both solute and solvent are treated quantum mechanically, we find that the inclusion of the response of the environment to the excitation of the solute leads to superior results than the use of a frozen environment (point charges or polGS), in particular, when the solute-solvent coupling is dominated by electrostatic effects which are well recovered in the polSS condition. QMC/MMpol represents therefore a robust scheme to treat important environmental effects beyond static point charges, combining the accuracy of QMC with the simplicity of a classical approach

Localized Polycentric Orbital Basis Set for Quantum Monte Carlo Calculations Derived from the Decomposition of Kohn-Sham Optimized Orbitals

In this work, we present a simple decomposition scheme of the Kohn-Sham optimized orbitals which is able to provide a reduced basis set, made of localized polycentric orbitals, specifically designed for Quantum Monte Carlo. The decomposition follows a standard Density functional theory (DFT) calculation and is based on atomic connectivity and shell structure. The new orbitals are used to construct a compact correlated wave function of the Slater–Jastrow form which is optimized at the Variational Monte Carlo level and then used as the trial wave function for a final Diffusion Monte Carlo accurate energy calculation. We are able, in this way, to capture the basic information on the real system brought by the Kohn-Sham orbitals and use it for the calculation of the ground state energy within a strictly variational method. Here, we show test calculations performed on some small selected systems to assess the validity of the proposed approach in a molecular fragmentation, in the calculation of a barrier height of a chemical reaction and in the determination of intermolecular potentials. The final Diffusion Monte Carlo energies are in very good agreement with the best literature data within chemical accuracy

Extraction of a One-Particle Reduced Density Matrix from a Quantum Monte Carlo Electronic Density: A New Tool for Studying Nondynamic Correlation

In this work, we present a method to build a first order reduced density matrix (1-RDM) of a molecule from variational Quantum Monte Carlo (VMC) computations by means of a given correlated mapping wave function. Such a wave function is modeled on a Generalized Valence Bond plus Complete Active Space Configuration Interaction form and fits at best the density resulting from the Slater-Jastrow wave function of VMC. The accuracy of the method proposed has been proved by comparing the resulting kinetic energy with the corresponding VMC value. This 1-RDM is used to analyze the amount of correlation eventually captured in Kohn-Sham calculations performed in an unrestricted approach (UKS-DFT) and with different energy functionals. We performed test calculations on a selected set of molecules that show a significant multireference character. In this analysis, we compared both local and global indicators of nondynamic and dynamic correlation. Moreover, following the natural orbital decomposition of the 1-RDM, we also compared the effective temperatures of the corresponding Fermi-like distributions. Although there is a general agreement between UKS-DFT and VMC, we found the best match with the functional LC-BLYP