No Arabic abstract
A method for computing electron momentum densities and Compton profiles from ab initio calculations is presented. Reciprocal space is divided into optimally-shaped tetrahedra for interpolation, and the linear tetrahedron method is used to obtain the momentum density and its projections such as Compton profiles. Results are presented and evaluated against experimental data for Be, Cu, Ni, Fe3Pt, and YBa2Cu4O8, demonstrating the accuracy of our method in a wide variety of crystal structures.
We present valence electron Compton profiles calculated within the density-functional theory using the all-electron full-potential projector augmented-wave method (PAW). Our results for covalent (Si), metallic (Li, Al) and hydrogen-bonded ((H_2O)_2) systems agree well with experiments and computational results obtained with other band-structure and basis set schemes. The PAW basis set describes the high-momentum Fourier components of the valence wave functions accurately when compared with other basis set schemes and previous all-electron calculations.
The advent of synchrotron sources has led to an increasing availability of high resolution Compton Profiles J(pz) and a consequent renewed interest in the reconstruction of the corresponding full momentum densities rho(p). We present results of applying a new method in which the radial parts of rho(p) and the measured profiles are expressed in terms of Jacobi polynomials. The technique is demonstrated using model projections that correspond to Mg and Gd spectra. Reconstructed densities, being in very good agreement with model ones, are a very good performance of our new reconstruction algorithm.
Reliable and robust methods of predicting the crystal structure of a compound, based only on its chemical composition, is crucial to the study of materials and their applications. Despite considerable ongoing research efforts, crystal structure prediction remains a challenging problem that demands large computational resources. Here we propose an efficient approach for first-principles crystal structure prediction. The new method explores and finds crystal structures by tiling together elementary tetrahedra that are energetically favorable and geometrically matching each other. This approach has three distinguishing features: a favorable building unit, an efficient calculation of local energy, and a stochastic Monte Carlo simulation of crystal growth. By applying the method to the crystal structure prediction of various materials, we demonstrate its validity and potential as a promising alternative to current methods.
Two-dimensional angular correlation of annihilation radiation (2D-ACAR) and Compton scattering are both powerful techniques to investigate the bulk electronic structure of crystalline solids through the momentum density of the electrons. Here we apply both methods to a single crystal of Pd to study the electron momentum density and the occupancy in the first Brillouin zone, and to point out the complementary nature of the two techniques. To retrieve the 2D spectra from 1D Compton profiles, a new direct inversion method (DIM) is implemented and benchmarked against the well-established Cormacks method. The comparison of experimental spectra with first principles density functional theory calculations of the electron momentum density and the two photon momentum density clearly reveals the importance of positron probing effects on the determination of the electronic structure. While the calculations are in good agreement with the experimental data, our results highlight some significant discrepancies.
Secondary electron emission (SEE) from inner linings of plasma chambers in electric thrusters for space propulsion can have a disruptive effect on device performance and efficiency. SEE is typically calculated using elastic and inelastic electron scattering theory by way of Monte Carlo simulations of independent electron trajectories. However, in practice the method can only be applied for ideally smooth surfaces and thin films, not representative of real material surfaces. Recently, micro-architected surfaces with nanometric features have been proposed to mitigate SEE and ion-induced erosion in plasma-exposed thruster linings. In this paper, we propose an approach for calculating secondary electron yields from surfaces with arbitrarily-complex geometries using an extension of the emph{ray tracing} Monte Carlo (RTMC) technique. We study nanofoam structures with varying porosities as representative micro-architected surfaces, and use RTMC to generate primary electron trajectories and track secondary electrons until their escape from the outer surface. Actual surfaces are represented as a discrete finite element meshes obtained from X-ray tomography images of tungsten nanofoams. At the local level, primary rays impinging into surface elements produce daughter rays of secondary electrons whose number, energies and angular characteristics are set by pre-calculated tables of SEE yields and energies from ideally-flat surfaces. We find that these micro-architected geometries can reduce SEE by up to 50% with respect to flat surfaces depending on porosity and primary electron energy.