No Arabic abstract
We develop numerical methods to calculate electron dynamics in crystalline solids in real-time time-dependent density functional theory employing exchange-correlation potentials which reproduce band gap energies of dielectrics; a meta generalized gradient approximation (meta-GGA) proposed by Tran and Blaha [Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 226401 (2009)] (TBm-BJ) and a hybrid functional proposed by Heyd, Scuseria, and Ernzerhof [J. Chem. Phys. 118, 8207 (2003)] (HSE). In time evolution calculations employing the TB-mBJ potential, we have found it necessary to adopt a predictor-corrector step for stable time-evolution. Since energy functional is not known for the TB-mBJ potential, we propose a method to evaluate electronic excitation energy without referring to the energy functional. Calculations using the HSE hybrid functional is computationally expensive due to the nonlocal Fock-like term. We develop a computational method for the operation of the Fock-like term in Fourier space, for which we employ massively parallel computers equipped with graphic processing units. To demonstrate significances of utilizing potentials providing correct band gap energies, we compare electronic excitations induced by femtosecond laser pulses using the TB-mBJ, HSE, and a simple local density approximation (LDA). At low laser intensities, electronic excitations are found to be sensitive to the band gap energy: results using TB-mBJ and HSE are close to each other, while the excitation of the LDA calculation is more intensive than the others. At high laser intensities close to a damage threshold, we have found that electronic excitation energies are similar among the three cases.
We present accurate optical spectra of semiconductors and insulators within a pure Kohn-Sham time-dependent density-functional approach. In particular, we show that the onset of the absorption is well reproduced when comparing to experiment. No empirical information nor a theory beyond Kohn-Sham density-functional theory, such as $GW$, is invoked to correct the Kohn-Sham gap. Our approach relies on the link between the exchange-correlation kernel of time-dependent density functional theory and the derivative discontinuity of ground-state density-functional theory. We show explicitly how to relate these two quantities. We illustrate the accuracy and simplicity of our approach by applying it to various semiconductors (Si, GaP, GaAs) and wide-gap insulators (C, LiF, Ar).
The development of semilocal models for the kinetic energy density (KED) is an important topic in density functional theory (DFT). This is especially true for subsystem DFT, where these models are necessary to construct the required non-additive embedding contributions. In particular, these models can also be efficiently employed to replace the exact KED in meta-Generalized Gradient Approximation (meta-GGA) exchange-correlation functionals allowing to extend the subsystem DFT applicability to the meta-GGA level of theory. Here, we present a two-dimensional scan of semilocal KED models as linear functionals of the reduced gradient and of the reduced Laplacian, for atoms and weakly-bound molecular systems. We find that several models can perform well but in any case the Laplacian contribution is extremely important to model the local features of the KED. Indeed a simple model constructed as the sum of Thomas-Fermi KED and 1/6 of the Laplacian of the density yields the best accuracy for atoms and weakly-bound molecular systems. These KED models are tested within subsystem DFT with various meta-GGA exchange-correlation functionals for non-bonded systems, showing a good accuracy of the method.
We apply the coupled dynamics of time-dependent density functional theory and Maxwell equations to the interaction of intense laser pulses with crystalline silicon. As a function of electromagnetic field intensity, we see several regions in the response. At the lowest intensities, the pulse is reflected and transmitted in accord with the dielectric response, and the characteristics of the energy deposition is consistent with two-photon absorption. The absorption process begins to deviate from that at laser intensities ~ 10^13 W/cm^2, where the energy deposited is of the order of 1 eV per atom. Changes in the reflectivity are seen as a function of intensity. When it passes a threshold of about 3 times 1012 W/cm2, there is a small decrease. At higher intensities, above 2 times 10^13 W/cm^2, the reflectivity increases strongly. This behavior can be understood qualitatively in a model treating the excited electron-hole pairs as a plasma.
Time-dependent density-functional theory (TDDFT) is a computationally efficient first-principles approach for calculating optical spectra in insulators and semiconductors, including excitonic effects. We show how exciton wave functions can be obtained from TDDFT via the Kohn-Sham transition density matrix, both in the frequency-dependent linear-response regime and in real-time propagation. The method is illustrated using one-dimensional model solids. In particular, we show that our approach provides insight into the formation and dissociation of excitons in real time. This opens the door to time-resolved studies of exciton dynamics in materials by means of real-time TDDFT.
We assess the validity of various exchange-correlation functionals for computing the structural, vibrational, dielectric, and thermodynamical properties of materials in the framework of density-functional perturbation theory (DFPT). We consider five generalized-gradient approximation (GGA) functionals (PBE, PBEsol, WC, AM05, and HTBS) as well as the local density approximation (LDA) functional. We investigate a wide variety of materials including a semiconductor (silicon), a metal (copper), and various insulators (SiO$_2$ $alpha$-quartz and stishovite, ZrSiO$_4$ zircon, and MgO periclase). For the structural properties, we find that PBEsol and WC are the closest to the experiments and AM05 performs only slightly worse. All three functionals actually improve over LDA and PBE in contrast with HTBS, which is shown to fail dramatically for $alpha$-quartz. For the vibrational and thermodynamical properties, LDA performs surprisingly very good. In the majority of the test cases, it outperforms PBE significantly and also the WC, PBEsol and AM05 functionals though by a smaller margin (and to the detriment of structural parameters). On the other hand, HTBS performs also poorly for vibrational quantities. For the dielectric properties, none of the functionals can be put forward. They all (i) fail to reproduce the electronic dielectric constant due to the well-known band gap problem and (ii) tend to overestimate the oscillator strengths (and hence the static dielectric constant).