No Arabic abstract
The Strongly Constrained and Appropriately Normed (SCAN) functional is a non-empirical meta-generalized-gradient approximation (meta-GGA) functional that satisfies all the known constraints that a meta-GGA functional can, but it also exhibits a great degree of sensitivity to numerical grids. Its numerical complexities are amplified when used in Perdew-Zunger (PZ) self-interaction correction (SIC) which requires evaluating energies and potentials using orbital densities that vary far more rapidly than spin densities. Recent regularization of the SCAN functional (rSCAN) simplifies numerical complexities of SCAN at the expense of violation of some exact constraints. To develop a good understanding of the performance of rSCAN and the effect of loss of an exact constraint at the limit of slowly varying density, we have compared its performance against SCAN for vibrational frequencies, infra-red and Raman intensities of water clusters, electric dipole moments, spin magnetic moments of a few molecular magnets, weak interaction energies of dimers, barrier heights of reactions, and atomization energies for benchmark sets of molecules. Likewise, we examined the performance of SIC-rSCAN using the PZ-SIC method by studying atomic total energies, ionization potentials and electron affinities, molecular atomization energies, barrier heights, and dissociation and reaction energies. We find that rSCAN requires a much less dense numerical grid and gives very similar results as SCAN for all properties examined with the exception of atomization energies which are somewhat worse in rSCAN. On the other hand, SIC-rSCAN gives marginally better performance than SIC-SCAN for almost all properties studied in this work.
Machine learning models are rapidly becoming widely used to simulate complex physicochemical phenomena with ab initio accuracy. Here, we use one such model as well as direct density functional theory (DFT) calculations to investigate the phase equilibrium of water, hexagonal ice (Ih), and cubic ice (Ic), with an eye towards studying ice nucleation. The machine learning model is based on deep neural networks and has been trained on DFT data obtained using the SCAN exchange and correlation functional. We use this model to drive enhanced sampling simulations aimed at calculating a number of complex properties that are out of reach of DFT-driven simulations and then employ an appropriate reweighting procedure to compute the corresponding properties for the SCAN functional. This approach allows us to calculate the melting temperature of both ice polymorphs, the driving force for nucleation, the heat of fusion, the densities at the melting temperature, the relative stability of ice Ih and Ic, and other properties. We find a correct qualitative prediction of all properties of interest. In some cases, quantitative agreement with experiment is better than for state-of-the-art semiempirical potentials for water. Our results also show that SCAN correctly predicts that ice Ih is more stable than ice Ic.
We investigate the electronic structure of a planar mononuclear Cu-based molecule [Cu(C$_6$H$_4$S$_2$)$_2$]$^z$ in two oxidation states ($z$$=$$-2$, $-$1) using density-functional theory (DFT) with Fermi-Lowdin orbital (FLO) self-interaction correction (SIC). The dianionic Cu-based molecule was proposed to be a promising qubit candidate. Self-interaction error within approximate DFT functionals renders severe delocalization of electron and spin densities arising from 3$d$ orbitals. The FLO-SIC method relies on optimization of Fermi-Lowdin orbital descriptors (FODs) with which localized occupied orbitals are constructed to create the SIC potentials. Starting with many initial sets of FODs, we employ a frozen-density loop algorithm within the FLO-SIC method to study the Cu-based molecule. We find that the electronic structure of the molecule remains unchanged despite somewhat different final FOD configurations. In the dianionic state (spin $S=1/2$), FLO-SIC spin density originates from the Cu $d$ and S $p$ orbitals with an approximate ratio of 2:1, in quantitative agreement with multireference calculations, while in the case of SIC-free DFT, the orbital ratio is reversed. Overall, FLO-SIC lowers the energies of the occupied orbitals and in particular the 3$d$ orbitals unhybridized with the ligands significantly, which substantially increases the energy gap between the highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) compared to SIC-free DFT results. The FLO-SIC HOMO-LUMO gap of the dianionic state is larger than that of the monoionic state, which is consistent with experiment. Our results suggest a positive outlook of the FLO-SIC method in the description of magnetic exchange coupling within 3$d$-element based systems.
Finite-temperature Kohn--Sham density-functional theory (KS-DFT) is a widely-used method in warm dense matter (WDM) simulations and diagnostics. Unfortunately, full KS-DFT-molecular dynamics models scale unfavourably with temperature and there remains uncertainty regarding the performance of existing approximate exchange-correlation (XC) functionals under WDM conditions. Of particular concern is the expected explicit dependence of the XC functional on temperature, which is absent from most approximations. Average-atom (AA) models, which significantly reduce the computational cost of KS-DFT calculations, have therefore become an integral part of WDM modelling. In this paper, we present a derivation of a first-principles AA model from the fully-interacting many-body Hamiltonian, carefully analysing the assumptions made and terms neglected in this reduction. We explore the impact of different choices within this model -- such as boundary conditions and XC functionals -- on common properties in WDM, for example equation-of-state data. Furthermore, drawing upon insights from ground-state KS-DFT, we speculate on likely sources of error in KS-AA models and possible strategies for mitigating against such errors.
The strongly constrained and appropriately normed (SCAN) semilocal density functional [J. Sun, A. Ruzsinszky, J. P. Perdew textit{Phys. Rev. Lett.} {bf 115}, 036402 (2015)] obeys all 17 known exact constraints for meta-generalized-gradient approximations (meta-GGA) and includes some medium range correlation effects. Long-range London dispersion interactions are still missing, but can be accounted for via an appropriate correction scheme. In this study, we combine SCAN with an efficient London dispersion correction and show that lattice energies of simple organic crystals can be improved with the applied correction by 50%. The London-dispersion corrected SCAN meta-GGA outperforms all other tested London-dispersion corrected meta-GGAs for molecular geometries. Our new method delivers mean absolute deviations (MADs) for main group bond lengths that are consistently below 1,pm, rotational constants with MADs of 0.2%, and noncovalent distances with MADs below 1%. For a large database of general main group thermochemistry and kinetics, it also delivers a weighted mean absolute deviation below 4 kcal/mol, one of the lowest for long-range corrected meta-GGA functionals. We also discuss some consequences of numerical sensitivity encountered for meta-GGAs.
The recently proposed rSCAN functional [J. Chem. Phys. 150, 161101 (2019)] is a regularized form of the SCAN functional [Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 036402 (2015)] that improves SCANs numerical performance at the expense of breaking constraints known from the exact exchange-correlation functional. We construct a new meta-generalized gradient approximation by restoring exact constraint adherence to rSCAN. The resulting functional maintains rSCANs numerical performance while restoring the transferable accuracy of SCAN.