DMC timestep and equilbration

I've been reading Chebyshev and Fourier Spectral Methods by J. P. Boyd.

In Chapter 12, p. 227, he points out that if we are only interested in the steady state, errors in the decay rate don't matter.

Chapter 13 talks about operator splitting, which looks very similar to how Diffusion Monte Carlo gets the short time approximation to the propagator. Section 13.4 talks about consistency - basically timestep error in the steady state.

I had the realization that one could use large timesteps in DMC for the equilibration part, and smaller timesteps once equilibrium was reached. More drastic population control measures are probably needed as well if large timesteps are used (at least I always had trouble maintaining a stable population of walkers if the timestep is too large).

This particular idea isn't terribly profound, but I'm finding it very enlighting to read about other methods for solving differential equations. I also like the presentation level of this book - lots of practical, concrete considerations as well as descriptions of the consequences of various equations.