CORRELATION-ENERGY, STRUCTURE FACTOR, RADIAL-DISTRIBUTION FUNCTION, AND MOMENTUM DISTRIBUTION OF THE SPIN-POLARIZED UNIFORM ELECTRON-GAS

The properties of the three-dimensional uniform electron gas in the Fermi liquid regime are analyzed using variational Monte Carlo (VMC) and fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo methods. Our study extends those of Ceperley [Phys. Rev. B 18, 3126 (1978)] and Ceperley and Alder [Phys. Rev. Lett. 45, 566 (1980)] to larger system sizes with improved statistics and, more importantly, to partial spin polarization. The density range 0.8 less-than-or-equal-to r(s) less-than-or-equal-to 10, which is the most relevant for density functional computations, is studied in detail. We analyze the size dependence of the simulation results and present an extended set of correlation energies extrapolated to the thermodynamic limit. Using the VMC method we analyze the spin dependence of-the correlation energy, and we compare our results to several interpolation formulas used in density functional calculations. We summarize our results by a simple interpolation formula. In addition, we present results for the radial distribution function, the structure factor, the momentum distribution, and triplet correlation functions, and we discuss the comparison with many-body semianalytic theories.