A constrained-path quantum Monte-Carlo approach for the nuclear shell model

A new QMC approach for the shell model yielding nearly exact spectroscopy of nuclei is presented. The originality of the formalism lies in the use of a variational symmetry-restored wave function to ‘steer’ the Brownian motion, and to control the sign/phase problem that generally makes the traditional QMC samplings totally ineffective by causing a prohibitive growth of the statistical errors. Tests of convergence and proof-of-principle results are reported.