Energies, densities, and pair correlation functions of jellium spheres by the variational Monte Carlo method

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Abstract
By the variational Monte Carlo technique, we determine accurate wave functions for N electrons (N≤20) confined by the electrostatic potential of positively charged jellium spheres. The quality of the wave functions is tested by the diffusion Monte Carlo method. This shows that 90% of the fixed-node correlation energy is recovered by the variational computation. We analyze the electron-electron correlation functions and we compare the density, the total, exchange, and correlation energies, and ionization potentials to the predictions of the local-density approximation to density-functional theory.