Wave function optimization in the variational Monte Carlo method

An appropriate iterative scheme for the minimization of the energy, based on the variational Monte Carlo (VMC) technique, is introduced and compared with existing stochastic schemes. We test the various methods for the one-dimensional Heisenberg ring and the two-dimensional t-J model and show that, with the present scheme, very accurate and efficient calculations are possible, even for several variational parameters. Indeed, by using a very efficient statistical evaluation of the first and the second energy derivatives, it is possible to define a very rapidly converging iterative scheme that, within VMC, is much more convenient than the standard Newton method. It is also shown how to optimize simultaneously both the Jastrow and the determinantal part of the wave function.