Molecular reference corrections for quantum Monte Carlo adsorption energies

Abstract

Accurate surface thermochemistry requires balanced error cancellation between extended slabs and molecular reference states. This balance can fail whenever the electronic-structure error is not transferable across the chemically distinct species entering a thermodynamic cycle. Here we examine this problem in single-determinant fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo (SD-FNDMC) for oxygen-reduction intermediates on Pt(111) and selected CO-reduction intermediates on Cu(111). Gas-phase thermochemistry is used to diagnose the reference-state imbalance, and a hybrid cycle is introduced to separate slab--adsorbate binding from molecular formation. The hybrid cycle keeps the surface binding term at the SD-FNDMC level, where cancellation is expected to be most favorable, and replaces the molecular formation contribution with a benchmark coupled cluster reference. For Pt(111), the resulting correction is small for O and OH but larger for OOH, while the geometry-matched refinement gives only a secondary correction. Applying the same cycle to $^\ast$CHO and $^\ast$COH adsorption on Cu(111) gives corrections of opposite sign, showing that the bias is controlled primarily by the electronic structure of the corresponding HCO and COH molecular references rather than by adsorbate geometry alone. This decomposition identifies molecular reference imbalance as a separable source of error in SD-FNDMC surface thermochemistry and reduces the corresponding bias without modifying the SD-FNDMC slab-binding contribution.