Abstract
We revisit here the lowest vertical excitations of cyanine dyes using quantum Monte Carlo and leverage recent developments to systematically improve on previous results. In particular, we employ a protocol for the construction of compact and accurate multideterminant Jastrow-Slater wave functions for multiple states, which we have recently validated on the excited-state properties of several small prototypical molecules. Here, we obtain quantum Monte Carlo excitation energies in excellent agreement with high-level coupled cluster for all the cyanines where the coupled cluster method is applicable. Furthermore, we push our protocol to longer chains, demonstrating that quantum Monte Carlo is a viable methodology to establish reference data at system sizes which are hard to reach with other high-end approaches of similar accuracy. Finally, we determine which ingredients are key to an accurate treatment of these challenging systems and rationalize why a description of the excitation based on only active π orbitals lacks the desired accuracy for the shorter chains.