Quantum Monte Carlo for the x-ray absorption spectrum of pyrrole at the nitrogen K-edge

Fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo (FNDMC) is used to simulate the x-ray absorption spectrum of a gas-phase pyrrole molecule at the nitrogen K-edge. Trial wave functions for core-excited states are constructed from ground-state Kohn-Sham determinants substituted with singly occupied natural orbitals from configuration interaction with single excitations calculations of the five lowest valence-excited triplet states. The FNDMC ionization potential (IP) is found to lie within 0.3 eV of the experimental value of 406.1 +/- 0.1 eV. The transition energies to anti-bonding virtual orbitals match the experimental spectrum after alignment of IP values and agree with the existing assignments. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3700803]