Stefano Baroni & Saverio Moroni
Diffusion Monte Carlo without branching: a round-trip tour from classical diffusion to quantum mechanics

• Langevin equation (LE).
• Fokker-Planck equation (FPE) for the above.
• Equivalence of the FPE with a Schroedinger equation in imaginary time. Definition of the "quantum potential" v'²/4 - v"/2
• Static and dynamical properties of the random walk generated by the LE. Equivalence between the classical real-time correlation functions and the quantum imaginary-time correlation functions.
• "Generalized" Feynman-Kac Formula (FKF). (i.e. FKF from a biased random walk).
• Calculation of observables and response functions from the FKF.
• A new algorithm based on the above (similar, but different from Caffarel's).
• Test applications to the hydrogen atom (trivial) and to ⁴He.
• Comparison with other methods.

Last modified: Fri Jul 3 10:22:57 EDT 1998