A study of electron affinities using the initiator approach to full configuration interaction quantum Monte Carlo.

For the atoms with Z ≤ 11, energies obtained using the "initiator" extension to full configuration interaction quantum Monte Carlo (i-FCIQMC) come to within statistical errors of the FCIQMC results. As these FCIQMC values have been shown to converge onto FCI results, the i-FCIQMC method allows similar accuracy to be achieved while significantly reducing the scaling with the size of the Slater determinant space. The i-FCIQMC electron affinities of the Z ≤ 11 atoms in the aug-cc-pVXZ basis sets are presented here. In every case, values are obtained to well within chemical accuracy [the mean absolute deviation (MAD) from the relativistically corrected experimental values is 0.41 mE(h)], and significantly improve on coupled cluster with singles, doubles and perturbative triples [CCSD(T)] results. Since the only remaining source of error is basis set incompleteness, we have investigated using CCSD(T)-F12 contributions to correct the i-FCIQMC results. By doing so, much faster convergence with respect to basis set size may be achieved for both the electron affinities and the FCIQMC ionization potentials presented in a previous paper. With this F12 correction, the MAD can be further reduced to 0.13 mE(h) for the electron affinities and 0.31 mE(h) for the ionization potentials.