  This paper investigates Monte Carlo techniques for construction of compact
wavefunctions for the internal atomic motion of the D3O+ ion. The polarization
force field models of Stillinger, et al and of Ojamae, et al. were used.
Initial pair product wavefunctions were obtained from the asymptotic high
temperature many-body density matrix after contraction to atom pairs using
Metropolis Monte Carlo. Subsequent characterization shows these pair product
wavefunctions to be well optimized for atom pair correlations despite that fact
that the predicted zero point energies are too high. The pair product
wavefunctions are suitable to use within variational Monte Carlo, including
excited states, and density matrix Monte Carlo calculations. Together with the
pair product wavefunctions, the traditional variational theorem permits
identification of wavefunction features with significant potential for further
optimization. The most important explicit correlation variable found for the
D3O+ ion was the vector triple product {\bf r}$_{OD1}\cdot$({\bf
r}$_{OD2}\times${\bf r}$_{OD3}$). Variational Monte Carlo with 9 of such
explicitly correlated functions yielded a ground state wavefunction with an
error of 5-6% in the zero point energy.
