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Updated: Dec 12, 2025

Exploring the Radical Nature of a Carbon Surface by Electron Paramagnetic Resonance and a Calibrated Gas Flow
Published on: April 24, 2014
Reliable radical stabilization energies from diffusion Monte Carlo calculations
Manolo C Per1, Emily K Fletcher1, Ellen T Swann1
1CSIRO Data61, Docklands, Victoria, Australia.
Abstract:
We assess the performance of variational (VMC) and diffusion (DMC) quantum Monte Carlo methods for calculating the radical stabilization energies of a set of 43 carbon-centered radical species. Even using simple single-determinant trial wavefunctions, both methods perform exceptionally well, with mean absolute deviations from reference values well under the chemical accuracy standard of 1 kcal/mol. In addition, the use of DMC results in a highly concentrated spread of errors, with all 43 results within chemical accuracy at the 95% confidence level. These results indicate that DMC is an extremely reliable method for calculating radical stabilization energies and could be used as a benchmark method for larger systems in future.
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