THE MC SCF PROBLEM AND SIMULATED ANNEALING STRATEGY OF GLOBAL MINIMIZATION

It is demonstrated that the method of simulated annealing can be successfully used for constructing an algorithm for solving the self-consistent field or the more general multi-configuration self-consistent field problems. It is shown that the simulated annealing based calculations do not encounter any difficulty even when a pathological divergence cripples a first-order MC SCF method. Applicability of the simulated annealing based strategy in solving general nonlinear matrix equations even in the presence of strong coupling is demonstrated in a model problem.