Anatomy of path integral Monte Carlo: Algebraic derivation of the harmonic oscillator's universal discrete imaginary-time propagator and its sequential optimization

Analytical evaluations of the path integral Monte Carlo thermodynamic and Hamiltonian energies for the harmonic oscillator

By using the recently derived universal discrete imaginary-time propagator of the harmonic oscillator, both thermodynamic and Hamiltonian energies can be given analytically and evaluated numerically at each imaginary time step for any short-time propagator. This work shows that, using only currently known short-time propagators, the Hamiltonian energy can be optimized to the twelfth-order, converging to the ground state energy of the harmonic oscillator in as few as three beads. This study makes it absolutely clear that the widely used second-order primitive approximation propagator, when used in computing thermodynamic energy, converges extremely slowly with an increasing number of beads.