Understanding and Improving the Efficiency of Full Configuration Interaction Quantum Monte Carlo

Within Full Configuration Interaction Quantum Monte Carlo, we investigate how the statistical error behaves as a function of the parameters which control the stochastic sampling. We define the inefficiency as a measure of the statistical error per particle sampling the space and per timestep and show there is a sizeable parameter regime where this is minimised. We find that this inefficiency increases sublinearly with Hilbert space size and can be reduced by localising the canonical Hartree–Fock molecular orbitals, suggesting that the choice of basis impacts the method beyond that of the sign problem.