  We present a new form of explicitly correlated wave function whose parameters
are mainly linear, to circumvent the problem of the optimization of a large
number of non-linear parameters usually encountered with basis sets of
explicitly correlated wave functions. With this trial wave function we
succeeded in minimizing the energy instead of the variance of the local energy,
as is more common in quantum Monte Carlo methods. We applied this wave function
to the calculation of the energies of Be 3P (1s22p2) and Be- 4So (1s22p3) by
variational and diffusion Monte Carlo methods. The results compare favorably
with those obtained by different types of explicitly correlated trial wave
functions already described in the literature. The energies obtained are
improved with respect to the best variational ones found in literature, and
within one standard deviation from the estimated non-relativistic limits
