\documentclass[10pt]{article} \usepackage{a4wide} \usepackage{listings} \usepackage{listings} \newcommand{\be}{\begin{equation}} \newcommand{\ee}{\end{equation}} \newcommand{\OP}[1]{{\bf\widehat{#1}}} \begin{document} \section*{Part a, Variational Monte Carlo studies of atoms} The final aim of this project is to develop a diffusion Monte Carlo program which can be used to obtain ground state properties of atoms like He, Be, O, Ne, Si etc. If possible (time allowing) the hope is to be to be able to perform calculations for important molecules The aim of the first part (part a) of this project is to use the Variational Monte Carlo (VMC) method and evaluate the ground state energy of the helium, beryllium and neon atoms. The variational Monte Carlo part will include the basic ingredients for performing a diffusion Monte Carlo calculation. Although we confine ourselves to atoms and molecules, you should however make your code flexible enough to run for two-dimensional systems like electrons confined in so-called quantum dots or other fermionic systems in one, two and three dimensions. We expect to finalize this part on March 22. Only a short report is required. We will start with the diffusion Monte Carlo part in the beginning of April. \section*{Exercise 1: Variational Monte Carlo calculations of the helium atom} We will start with the simplest possible system beyond hydrogen, namely the helium atom. We label $r_1$ the distance from electron 1 to the nucleus and similarly $r_2$ the distance between electron 2 and the nucleus. The contribution to the potential energy from the interactions between the electrons and the nucleus is \be -\frac{2}{r_1}-\frac{2}{r_2}, \ee and if we add the electron-electron repulsion with $r_{12}=|{\bf r}_1-{\bf r}_2|$, the total potential energy $V(r_1, r_2)$ is \be V(r_1, r_2)=-\frac{2}{r_1}-\frac{2}{r_2}+ \frac{1}{r_{12}}, \ee yielding the total Hamiltonian \be \OP{H}=-\frac{\nabla_1^2}{2}-\frac{\nabla_2^2}{2} -\frac{2}{r_1}-\frac{2}{r_2}+ \frac{1}{r_{12}}, \ee and Schr\"odinger's equation reads \be \OP{H}\psi=E\psi. \ee All equations are in so-called atomic units. The distances $r_i$ and $r_{12}$ are dimensionless. To have energies in electronvolt you need to multiply all results with $2\times E_0$, where $E_0=13.6$ eV. The experimental binding energy for helium in atomic units a.u. is $E_{\mathrm{He}}=-2.9037$ a.u.. \begin{enumerate} \item[1a)] We want to perform a Variational Monte Carlo calculation of the ground state of the helium atom. In our first attempt we will use a brute force Metropolis sampling with a trial wave function which has the following form \begin{equation} \psi_{T}({\bf r_1},{\bf r_2}, {\bf r_{12}}) = \exp{\left(-\alpha(r_1+r_2)\right)} \exp{\left(\frac{r_{12}}{2(1+\beta r_{12})}\right)}, \label{eq:trial} \end{equation} with $\alpha$ and $\beta$ as variational parameters. Your task is to perform a Variational Monte Carlo calculation using the Metropolis algorithm to compute the integral \begin{equation} \langle E \rangle = \frac{\int d{\bf r_1}d{\bf r_2}\psi^{\ast}_T({\bf r_1},{\bf r_2}, {\bf r_{12}})\OP{H}({\bf r_1},{\bf r_2}, {\bf r_{12}})\psi_T({\bf r_1},{\bf r_2}, {\bf r_{12}})} {\int d{\bf r_1}d{\bf r_2}\psi^{\ast}_T({\bf r_1},{\bf r_2}, {\bf r_{12}})\psi_T({\bf r_1},{\bf r_2}, {\bf r_{12}})}. \end{equation} You should parallelize your program. Find the energy minimum and compute also the mean distance $r_{12}$ between the two electrons for the optimal set of the variational parameters. A code for doing a VMC calculation for the helium atom can be found on the webpage of the course, see under programs. Your Monte Carlo moves are determined by \begin{equation} {\bf R}' = {\bf R} +\delta \times r, \end{equation} where $r$ is a random number from the uniform distribution and $\delta$ a chosen step length. In solving this exercise you need to devise an algorithm which finds an optimal value of $\delta$ for the variational parameters $\alpha$ and $\beta$, resulting in roughly $50\%$ accepted moves. Give a physical interpretation of the best value of $\alpha$. Make a plot of the variance as a function of the number of Monte Carlo cycles. \item[1b)] Find closed form expressions for the local energy (see below) for the above trial wave function and explain shortly how this trial function satisfies the cusp condition when $r_1\rightarrow 0$ or $r_2\rightarrow 0$ or $r_{12}\rightarrow 0$. Show that closed-form expression for the trial wave function is \[ E_{L2} = E_{L1}+\frac{1}{2(1+\beta r_{12})^2}\left\{\frac{\alpha(r_1+r_2)}{r_{12}}(1-\frac{\mathbf{r}_1\mathbf{r}_2}{r_1r_2})-\frac{1}{2(1+\beta r_{12})^2}-\frac{2}{r_{12}}+\frac{2\beta}{1+\beta r_{12}}\right\}, \] where \[ E_{L1} = \left(\alpha-Z\right)\left(\frac{1}{r_1}+\frac{1}{r_2}\right)+\frac{1}{r_{12}}-\alpha^2. \] Compare the results of with and without the closed-form expressions (in terms of CPU time). \item[1c)] Introduce now importance sampling and study the dependence of the results as a function of the time step $\delta t$. Compare the results with those obtained under 1a) and comment eventual differences. In performing the Monte Carlo analysis you should use blocking as a technique to make the statistical analysis of the numerical data. The code has to run in parallel. \item[1d)] With the optimal parameters for the ground state wave function, compute the onebody density and the charge density. Discuss your results and compare the results with those obtained with a pure hydrogenic wave functions. Run a Monte Carlo calculations without the Jastrow factor as well and compute the same quantities. How important are the correlations induced by the Jastrow factor? \item[1e)] Repeat step 1c) by varying the energy using the conjugate gradient method to obtain the best possible set of parameters $\alpha$ and $\beta$. \end{enumerate} \section*{Exercise 2: Variational Monte Carlo calculations of the Beryllium and Neon atoms} The previous exercise has prepared you for extending your calculational machinery to other systems. Here we will focus on the neon and beryllium atoms. It is convenient to make modules or classes of trial wave functions, both many-body wave functions and single-particle wave functions and the quantum numbers involved, such as spin, orbital momentum and principal quantum numbers. The new item you need to pay attention to is the calculation of the Slater Determinant. This is an additional complication to your VMC calculations. If we stick to hydrogen-like wave functions, the trial wave function for Beryllium can be written as \begin{equation} \psi_{T}({\bf r_1},{\bf r_2}, {\bf r_3}, {\bf r_4}) = Det\left(\phi_{1}({\bf r_1}),\phi_{2}({\bf r_2}), \phi_{3}({\bf r_3}),\phi_{4}({\bf r_4})\right) \prod_{i