The simple harmonic oscillator ground state using a variational Monte Carlo method

Abstract

A Monte Carlo method is used to evaluate the ground-state energy of a quantum particle in a harmonic oscillator potential. The use of a trial wavefunction illustrates the process by means of which the Monte Carlo method approximates with great accuracy the well known ground-state energy of a quantum mechanical harmonic oscillator. A FORTRAN program incorporating the numerical approach that is suitable for a personal computer is available in the PDF version of this article.