No Arabic abstract
We study within the many-body Greens function GW and Bethe-Salpeter formalisms the excitation energies of a paradigmatic model dipeptide, focusing on the four lowest-lying local and charge-transfer excitations. Our GW calculations are performed at the self-consistent level, updating first the quasiparticle energies, and further the single-particle wavefunctions within the static Coulomb-hole plus screened-exchange approximation to the GW self-energy operator. Important level crossings, as compared to the starting Kohn-Sham LDA spectrum, are identified. Our final Bethe-Salpeter singlet excitation energies are found to agree, within 0.07 eV, with CASPT2 reference data, except for one charge-transfer state where the discrepancy can be as large as 0.5 eV. Our results agree best with LC-BLYP and CAM-B3LYP calculations with enhanced long-range exchange, with a 0.1 eV mean absolute error. This has been achieved employing a parameter-free formalism applicable to metallic or insulating extended or finite systems.
Helium atom is the simplest many-body electronic system provided by nature. The exact solution to the Schrodinger equation is known for helium ground and excited states, and represents a workbench for any many-body methodology. Here, we check the ab initio many-body GW approximation and Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) against the exact solution for helium. Starting from Hartree-Fock, we show that GW and BSE yield impressively accurate results on excitation energies and oscillator strength, systematically improving time-dependent Hartree-Fock. These findings suggest that the accuracy of BSE and GW approximations is not significantly limited by self-interaction and self-screening problems even in this few electron limit. We further discuss our results in comparison to those obtained by time-dependent density-functional theory.
We study within the many-body Greens function GW and Bethe-Salpeter approaches the neutral singlet excitations of the zinctetraphenylporphyrin and C70 fullerene donor-acceptor complex. The lowest transition is a charge-transfer excitation between the donor and the acceptor with an energy in excellent agreement with recent constrained density functional theory calculations. Beyond the lowest charge-transfer state, of which the energy can be determined with simple electrostatic models that we validate, the Bethe-Salpeter approach provides the full excitation spectrum. We evidence the existence of hot electron-hole states which are resonant in energy with the lowest donor intramolecular excitation and show an hybrid intramolecular and charge-transfer character, favouring the transition towards charge separation. These findings support the recently proposed scenario for charge separation at donor-acceptor interfaces through delocalized hot charge-transfer states.
The discovery of atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) magnetic semiconductors has triggered enormous research interest recently. In this work, we use first-principles many-body perturbation theory to study a prototypical 2D ferromagnetic semiconductor, monolayer chromium tribromide (CrBr$_3$). With broken time-reversal symmetry, spin-orbit coupling, and excitonic effects included through the full-spinor $GW$ and $GW$ plus Bethe-Salpeter equation ($GW$-BSE) methods, we compute the frequency-dependent dielectric function tensor that governs the optical and magneto-optical properties. In addition, we provide a detailed theoretical formalism for simulating magnetic circular dichroism, magneto-optical Kerr effect, and Faraday effect, demonstrating the approach with monolayer CrBr$_3$. Due to reduced dielectric screening in 2D and localized nature of the Cr d orbitals, we find strong self-energy effects on the quasiparticle band structure of monolayer CrBr$_3$ that give a 3.8 eV indirect band gap. Also, excitonic effects dominate the low-energy optical and magneto-optical responses in monolayer CrBr$_3$ where a large exciton binding energy of 2.3 eV is found for the lowest bright exciton state with excitation energy at 1.5 eV. We further find that the magneto-optical signals demonstrate strong dependence on the excitation frequency and substrate refractive index. Our theoretical framework for modelling optical and magneto-optical effects could serve as a powerful theoretical tool for future study of optoelectronic and spintronics devices consisting of van der Waals 2D magnets.
We check the ab initio GW approximation and Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) many-body methodology against the exact solution benchmark of the hydrogen molecule H$_2$ ground state and excitation spectrum, and in comparison with the configuration interaction (CI) and time-dependent Hartree-Fock methods. The comparison is made on all the states we could unambiguously identify from the excitonic wave functions symmetry. At the equilibrium distance $R = 1.4 , a_0$, the GW+BSE energy levels are in good agreement with the exact results, with an accuracy of 0.1~0.2 eV. GW+BSE potential-energy curves are also in good agreement with the CI and the exact result up to $2.3 , a_0$. The solution no longer exists beyond $3.0 , a_0$ for triplets ($4.3 , a_0$ for singlets) due to instability of the ground state. We tried to improve the GW reference ground state by a renormalized random-phase approximation (r-RPA), but this did not solve the problem.
In the development of highly efficient photovoltaic cells, solid perovskite systems have demonstrated unprecedented promise, with the figure of merit exceeding nineteen percent of efficiency. In this paper, we investigate the optical and vibrational properties of organometallic cubic perovskite CH3NH3PbI3 using first-principles calculations. For accurate theoretical description, we go beyond conventional density functional theory (DFT), and calculated optical conductivity using relativist quasi-particle (GW) correction. Incorporating these many-body effects, we further solve Bethe-Salpeter equations (BSE) for excitons, and found enhanced optical conductivity near the gap edge. Due to the presence of organic methylammonium cations near the center of the perovskite cell, the system is sensitive to low energy vibrational modes. We estimate the phonon modes of CH3NH3PbI3 using small displacement approach, and further calculate the infrared absorption (IR) spectra. Qualitatively, our calculations of low-energy phonon frequencies are in good agreement with our terahertz measurements. Therefore, for both energy scales (around 2 eV and 0-20 meV), our calculations reveal the importance of many-body effects and their contributions to the desirable optical properties in the cubic organometallic perovskites system.