A deterministic alternative to the full configuration interaction quantum Monte Carlo method.

Development of exponentially scaling methods has seen great progress in tackling larger systems than previously thought possible. One such technique, full configuration interaction quantum Monte Carlo, is a useful algorithm that allows exact diagonalization through stochastically sampling determinants. The method derives its utility from the information in the matrix elements of the Hamiltonian, along with a stochastic projected wave function, to find the important parts of Hilbert space. However, the stochastic representation of the wave function is not required to search Hilbert space efficiently, and here we describe a highly efficient deterministic method that can achieve chemical accuracy for a wide range of systems, including the difficult Cr2 molecule. We demonstrate for systems like Cr2 that such calculations can be performed in just a few cpu hours which makes it one of the most efficient and accurate methods that can attain chemical accuracy for strongly correlated systems. In addition our method also allows efficient calculation of excited state energies, which we illustrate with benchmark results for the excited states of C2.