THE TOWLER INSTITUTE


Quantum Monte Carlo in the Apuan Alps VI

The sixth "Quantum Monte Carlo in the Apuan Alps" international workshop took place from the 24th to the 31st of July 2010. The participants spent four hours each morning listening to quantum Monte Carlo talks, followed by afternoons of mountain walking, caving, canyoning and other activities. Notable athletic achievements by the group included a traverse of the north face of Pizzo d'Uccello (the 'Matterhorn of the Apuan Alps') on the via ferrata Tordini-Galligani, the discovery and partial exploration of the Buca delle Fate di Coreglia Antelminelli cave, ascents of Monte Procinto, Pania della Croce, Monte Forato, Monte Matanna, Monte Sumbra, and the Turrite di San Rocco canyon, along with a magnificent 13-11 thrashing inflicted on the thrusting young village lads in the fifth "Vallico Sotto Against The World" football match (inspired by the magnificent Neapolitan Dario Alfè). The days were concluded with evening discussions and dinner.

List of participants

Dario Alfè, Claudio Amovilli, Michal Bajdich, Dario Bressanini, Michele Casula, Hai-Ping Cheng, Neil Drummmond, Elif Ertekin, Franca Maria Floris, Matthew Foulkes, Rex Godby, Richard Hennig, Martin Korth, Henry Krakauer, Jaron Krogel, Martin Krupicka, Robert Lee, Pablo López Ríos, Arne Lüchow, Ryo Maezono, Mariapia Marchi, Alston Misquitta, Saverio Moroni, Richard Needs, Fernando Reboredo, Katie Schwarz, Gaetano Senatore, Priyanka Seth, Simone Taioli, John Trail, Mike Towler, Norm Tubman, Lucas Wagner, Sarah Krakauer, Tonia Sebastian, Jim Fry, Emma Drummond, David Drummond, Stacy Hennig, Matty Hennig, Ioana Campean, Maria Misquitta, Mark Misquitta, Sandra Korth, Samantha Keil, Saska Towler



Talks presented (password required)

Dario Alfè (d.alfe at ucl.ac.uk)

  • "Surface free energies and absolute rate of desorption from quantum Monte Carlo"
    (NOT AVAILABLE)

Claudio Amovilli (amovilli at dcci.unipi.it)

  • "Chemistry of nitrosamine: a QMC study of the thermal de-NOx process" [PDF]
    "Quantum Monte Carlo formulation of volume polarization in dielectric continuum theory" [PDF]

Michal Bajdich (bajdichm at ornl.gov)

  • "Spherical jellium with impurity, and, self-healing QMC for atoms and molecules" [PDF]

Dario Bressanini (dario.bressanini at uninsubria.it)

  • "Boranes and azaborane with QMC" [PPT]

Michele Casula (casula at cpht.polytechnique.fr)

  • "Quantum Monte Carlo methods as an exact route to correlated regimes in 1D systems" [PDF]

Hai-Ping Cheng (cheng at qtp.ufl.edu)

  • "Studying metal clusters by quantum Monte Carlo method" [PDF]

Neil Drummond (ndd21 at cam.ac.uk)

  • "First-principles study of a positron immersed in an electron gas" [PDF]

Elif Ertekin (elif1 at mit.edu)

  • "Confessions of a materials scientist: defect behaviour of strontium titanate" [PDF]

Matthew Foulkes (wmc.foulkes at imperial.ac.uk)

  • "Experiment with Alavi's FCI-QMC method" [PDF]

Rex Godby (rwg3 at york.ac.uk)

  • "Quantum transport: electron-electron and electron-phonon effects" [PDF]

Richard Hennig (rhennig at cornell.edu)

  • "Quantum Monte Carlo for point defects in Si and ZnO semiconductors"
    (NOT AVAILABLE)

Martin Korth (mkorth at muenster.de)

  • "Accurate thermochemistry with fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo" [PDF]

Henry Krakauer (hxkrak at wm.edu)

  • "Auxiliary-field QMC for quantum chemistry: recent progress and open issues" [PDF]

Jaron Krogel (jkrogel2 at illinois.edu)

  • "Hunting anomalous excitations in bcc helium-4" [PPT]

Robert Lee (rml38 at cam.ac.uk)

  • "Random errors and outliers in QMC" [PDF]

Pablo López Ríos (pl275 at cam.ac.uk)

  • "VMC sampling efficiency" [PDF]

Arne Lüchow (luechow at rwth-aachen.de)

  • "Efficient multi-reference DMC and insight from QMC" [PDF]

Ryo Maezono (rmaezono at mac.com)

  • "Weak interactions treated by DMC" [PDF]

Mariapia Marchi (marchi at sissa.it)

  • "The spin susceptibility enhancement in wide AlAs quantum wells" [PDF]

Alston Misquitta (am592 at cam.ac.uk)

  • "Many-body dispersion interactions between semiconducting wires" [PDF]

Saverio Moroni (saveriomoroni at gmail.com)

  • "Energy derivatives in fixed-node QMC: unbiased estimates with finite variance" [PDF]

Richard Needs (rn11 at cam.ac.uk)

  • "Pseudopotentials for QMC" [PDF]
    "Materials at terapascal pressures" [PDF]

Fernando Reboredo (reboredofa at ornl.gov)

  • "New developments in self-healing diffusion Monte Carlo"
    (NOT AVAILABLE)

Katie Schwarz (kaschwar at gmail.com)

  • "Quantum Monte Carlo backflow calculations of benzene dimers" [PDF]

Gaetano Senatore (g.m.senatore at gmail.com)

  • "Valley susceptibility of quasi-2D electrons in AlAs quantum wells"
    (NOT AVAILABLE)

Priyanka Seth (ps479 at cam.ac.uk)

  • "QMC studies of the first-row atoms and ions, continued.." [PDF]

Simone Taioli (ucfbsta at ucl.ac.uk)

  • "SURPRISES: when ab initio meets statistics in extended systems" [PDF]

Mike Towler (mdt26 at cam.ac.uk)

  • "The magic of moving nodes" [PDF]
    Accompanying video [GIF]

John Trail (jrtrail at jaist.ac.jp)

  • "Some estimates in variational quantum Monte Carlo" [PDF]

Norm Tubman (tubman1 at llnl.gov)

  • "Release node for small molecules" [PPT]

Lucas Wagner (lkwagner at mit.edu)

  • "Open source quantum Monte Carlo and an application to metal hydride clusters" [PDF]

Comments

  • "Thanks for yet another excellent week in Vallico Sotto. Definitely my favourite conference."

  • "Many, many thanks for your and Sam's hospitality once again at the QMC workshop. As before, your kindness in running the workshop and sharing your family life with uncouth physicists for so long made for a wonderfully intense experience, with much great science to think about, balanced by exhilarating mountain walking."

  • "We had a wonderful time and thanks a million for making it happen."

  • "Thanks again for including us in a fabulous experience at Vallico Sotto! Mr. X & I had a great time and really appreciate all the effort you put into planning, logistics, etc. An event like this doesn't just happen! Believe it or not, I was reading a book by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi while en route from Pisa to Roma, & came across the following sentence: 'If one reads the biographies of physicists like Bohr, Heisenberg, Chandrashekhar, and Bethe, one gets the impression that without hikes in the mountains and the vision of night skies their science would not have amounted to much.' Isn't that perfect?"

  • "After all, I thank you again for beautiful week in your house. I probably left my towel there, so either discard it or use it for capturing water in church during heavy rains. I have no emotional relation to it."