The transition metal-oxygen bond appears prominently throughout chemistry and
solid-state physics. Many materials, from biomolecules to ferroelectrics to the
components of supernova remnants contain this bond in some form. Many of these
materials' properties strongly depend on fine details of the TM-O bond and
intricate correlation effects, which make accurate calculations of their
properties very challenging. We present quantum Monte Carlo, an explicitly
correlated class of methods, to improve the accuracy of electronic structure
calculations over more traditional methods like density functional theory. We
find that unlike s-p type bonding, the amount of hybridization of the d-p bond
in TM-O materials is strongly dependant on electronic correlation.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures, to appear as a topical review in J. Physics:
Condensed Matte
