{
  "abstract": "Accurate quantum many-body calculations often depend on reliable reference states or good human-designed ansätze, yet such knowledge can become unreliable in hard problems like strongly correlated systems. Here we show that high-accuracy many-body ground states can be discovered directly from random Slater determinants. We introduce the Trimmed Configuration Interaction (TrimCI) method, which self-refines by iteratively expanding and trimming configurations in the variational space. TrimCI matches state-of-the-art accuracy using orders of magnitude fewer determinants and computer time: 10⁶-fold fewer than a recent quantum computing calculation on an iron-sulfur cluster, 10⁵-fold fewer than a leading classical method on a larger iron-sulfur cluster in nitrogenase, and over 99% of the ground-state energy of a strongly correlated lattice system from 10⁻²⁸ of its Hilbert space, exceeding quantum Monte Carlo accuracy by orders of magnitude in some regimes. TrimCI thus provides an auto-initializing, accurate and highly efficient framework for quantum many-body systems, whose compact explicit wavefunctions enable direct and rapid evaluation of observables.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA. hao.zhang.quantum@gmail.com.",
    "Department of Physics, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA. mjotten@wisc.edu.",
    "Department of Chemistry, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, USA. mjotten@wisc.edu."
  ],
  "article_type": "research article",
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 2,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Hao Zhang",
      "orcid": "0009-0004-2478-8581"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        1,
        2
      ],
      "name": "Matthew Otten",
      "orcid": "0000-0002-6522-5820"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/28k089qr2j99j.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.1038/s41467-026-77968-1",
  "fulltext_url": "https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC13720135",
  "id": "28k089qr2j99j",
  "issns": [
    "2041-1723"
  ],
  "landing_url": "https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42957674",
  "language": "eng",
  "licence": "CC-BY",
  "licence_label": "CC BY",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "heading",
      "Article"
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      "openalex",
      "3107|Advanced Chemical Physics Studies"
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  "openalex": "W7214763695",
  "pdf_url": "https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC13720135?pdf=render",
  "pmcid": "PMC13720135",
  "pmid": "42957674",
  "published": "2026-09-29",
  "publisher": "Nature Publishing Group",
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/28k089qr2j99j.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-31T12:21:29Z",
      "native_id": "MED:42957674",
      "source": "europepmc",
      "url": "https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42957674"
    },
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-11-02T12:23:58Z",
      "native_id": "PMC13720135",
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      "url": "https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-77968-1"
    }
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  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "physics",
      "origin": "openalex:3107|Advanced Chemical Physics Studies",
      "subfield": "amo"
    }
  ],
  "title": "An auto-initializing algorithm to determine electronic ground states from random Slater determinants.",
  "title_text": "An auto-initializing algorithm to determine electronic ground states from random Slater determinants.",
  "type": "peer-reviewed",
  "updated_at": "2026-11-03T12:21:04Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/28k089qr2j99j",
  "venue": "Nature communications",
  "versions": []
}