Atomization of correlated molecular-hydrogen chain: A fully microscopic variational Monte Carlo solution

We discuss electronic properties and their evolution for the linear chain of $H_2$ molecules in the presence of a uniform external force $f$ acting along the chain. The system is described by an extended Hubbard model within a fully microscopic approach. Explicitly, the microscopic parameters describing the intra- and intersite Coulomb interactions are determined together with the hopping integrals, by optimizing simultaneously the system ground state energy and the single-particle wave functions in the correlated state. The many-body wave function is taken in the Jastrow form and the variational Monte Carlo (VMC) method is used in combination with an ab initio approach to determine the energy. Both the effective Bohr radii of the renormalized single-particle wave functions and the many-body wave function parameters are determined for each $f$, which is the only external parameter in the whole analysis. Hence the evolution of the system can be analyzed in detail as a function of the equilibrium intermolecular distance, which in turn is determined for each $f$ value. The transition to the atomic state, including the Peierls distortion stability, can thus be studied in a systematic manner, particularly near the threshold of the dissociation of the molecular into an atomic chain. We also show that interelectronic correlations enhance the Peierls distortion. The computational reliability of the VMC approach is also estimated.