The electronic properties of a semi-infinite metal surface without a bulk gap are studied by a formalism able to account for the continuous spectrum of the system. The density of states at the surface is calculated within the $GW$ approximation of many-body perturbation theory. We demonstrate the presence of an unoccupied surface resonance peaked at the position of the first image state. The resonance encompasses the whole Rydberg series of image states and cannot be resolved into individual peaks. Its origin is the shift in spectral weight when many-body correlation effects are taken into account.
We present a detailed study of the coupling-constant-averaged exchange-correlation hole density at a jellium surface, which we obtain in the random-phase approximation (RPA) of many-body theory. We report contour plots of the exchange-only and exchange-correlation hole densities, the integration of the exchange-correlation hole density over the surface plane, the on-top correlation hole, and the energy density. We find that the on-top correlation hole is accurately described by local and semilocal density-functional approximations. We also find that for electrons that are localized far outside the surface the main part of the corresponding exchange-correlation hole is localized at the image plane.
We present an extensive set of surface and chemisorption energies calculated using state of the art many-body perturbation theory. In the first part of the paper we consider ten surface reactions in the low coverage regime where experimental data is available. Here the random phase approximation (RPA) is found to yield high accuracy for both adsorption and surface energies. In contrast all the considered density functionals fail to describe both quantities accurately. This establishes the RPA as a universally accurate method for surface science. In the second part, we use the RPA to construct a database of 200 high quality adsorption energies for reactions involving OH, CH, NO, CO, N$_2$, N, O and H over a wide range of 3d, 4d and 5d transition metals. Due to the significant computational demand, these results are obtained in the high coverage regime where adsorbate-adsorbate interactions can be significant. RPA is compared to the more advanced renormalised adiabatic LDA (rALDA) method for a subset of the reactions and they are found to describe the adsorbate-metal bond as well as adsorbate-adsorbate interactions similarly. The RPA results are compared to a range of standard density functional theory methods typically employed for surface reactions representing the various rungs on Jacobs ladder. The deviations are found to be highly functional, surface and reaction dependent. Our work establishes the RPA and rALDA methods as universally accurate full ab-initio methods for surface science where accurate experimental data is scarce. The database is freely available via the Computational Materials Repository (CMR).
We investigate the surface- and bulk-like properties of the pristine (110)-surface of silver using threshold photoemission by excitation with light of 5.9 eV. Using a momentum microscope, we identified two distinct transitions along the $overline{Gamma},overline{textrm{Y}}$-direction of the crystal. The first one is a so far unknown surface resonance for the (110) noble metal surface, exhibiting an exceptionally large bulk character, that has so far been elusive in surface sensitive experiments. The second one stems from the well known bulk-like Mahan cone oriented along the $Gamma L$-direction inside the crystal but projected onto the (110)-surface cut. The existence of the new state is confirmed by photocurrent calculations and its character analyzed.
Many-body interactions in monolayer transition-metal dichalcogenides are strongly affected by their unique band structure. We study these interactions by measuring the energy shift of neutral excitons (bound electron-hole pairs) in gated WSe$_2$ and MoSe$_2$. Surprisingly, while the blueshift of the neutral exciton, $X^0$, in electron-doped samples can be more than 10~meV, the blueshift in hole-doped samples is nearly absent. Taking into account dynamical screening and local-field effects, we present a transparent and analytical model that elucidates the crucial role played by intervalley plasmons in electron-doped conditions. The energy shift of $X^0$ as a function of charge density is computed showing agreement with experiment, where the renormalization of $X^0$ by intervalley plasmons yields a stronger blueshift in MoSe$_2$ than in WSe$_2$ due to differences in their band ordering.
A correct description of electronic exchange and correlation effects for molecules in contact with extended (metal) surfaces is a challenging task for first-principles modeling. In this work we demonstrate the importance of collective van der Waals dispersion effects beyond the pairwise approximation for organic--inorganic systems on the example of atoms, molecules, and nanostructures adsorbed on metals. We use the recently developed many-body dispersion (MBD) approach in the context of density-functional theory [Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 236402 (2012); J. Chem. Phys. 140, 18A508 (2014)] and assess its ability to correctly describe the binding of adsorbates on metal surfaces. We briefly review the MBD method and highlight its similarities to quantum-chemical approaches to electron correlation in a quasiparticle picture. In particular, we study the binding properties of xenon, 3,4,9,10-perylene-tetracarboxylic acid (PTCDA), and a graphene sheet adsorbed on the Ag(111) surface. Accounting for MBD effects we are able to describe changes in the anisotropic polarizability tensor, improve the description of adsorbate vibrations, and correctly capture the adsorbate--surface interaction screening. Comparison to other methods and experiment reveals that inclusion of MBD effects improves adsorption energies and geometries, by reducing the overbinding typically found in pairwise additive dispersion-correction approaches.