Casino introduction and usage information
CASINO is a code for performing quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) electronic structure calculations for finite and periodic systems. Its development was inspired by a Fortran77 development code (known simply as ‘the QMC code’) written in the early 1990s in Cambridge by Richard Needs and Guna Rajagopal, assisted by many helpful discussions with Matthew Foulkes. This was later extended by Andrew Williamson up to 1995 and then by Paul Kent and Mike Towler up to 1998. Various different versions of this were able to treat fcc solids, single atoms and the homogeneous electron gas. By the late 1990s it was clear that a modern general code capable of treating arbitrary systems (e.g. at least atoms, molecules, polymers, slabs, crystals, and electron phases) was required, not only for theuse of the Cambridge QMC group, but for public distribution. At that time, a user-friendly general publically available code did not exist (at least for periodic systems), and it was felt to be a good thi...