Correlated ground state of diamond reexamined

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Abstract
New ab initio correlation calculations for the correlated ground state and the binding energy of diamond are presented. As a starting point, we use an improved self-consistent-field ground state. It is obtained from a calculation within the local-density approximation (LDA). The correlation calculation is performed with the help of the local ansatz of Stollhoff and Fulde. Recent improvements in the correlation treatment are included. The resulting estimate of the binding energy obtained is considerably better than the LDA results. This variational scheme treats the short-range correlations very efficiently. The computations for diamond are, therefore, no more time consuming than comparable variational calculations for a small molecule like ethane.