Jc. Grossman et L. Mitas, HIGH-ACCURACY MOLECULAR HEATS OF FORMATION AND REACTION BARRIERS - ESSENTIAL ROLE OF ELECTRON CORRELATION, Physical review letters, 79(22), 1997, pp. 4353-4356
We demonstrate that the quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) methodology (i) prov
ides barrier heights and heats of formation within similar to 0.05 eV
of experimental values, (ii) confirms recent measurements for the ring
inversion of cyclo-octatetraene, and (iii) enables us to predict quan
tities not yet measured. Density functional methods show a mixed perfo
rmance in achieving the accuracy required for predictive calculations.
Further comparisons show that QMC is competitive in accuracy with the
best correlated wave function methods while being applicable to much
larger systems because of more favorable scaling.