No Arabic abstract
Ab initio molecular dynamics simulation is used to study the structure and electronic properties of the liquid Ga-Se system at the three compositions Ga$_2$Se, GaSe and Ga$_2$Se$_3$, and of the GaSe and Ga$_2$Se$_3$ crystals. The calculated equilibrium structure of GaSe crystal agrees well with available experimental data. The neutron-weighted liquid structure factors calculated from the simulations are in reasonable agreement with recent neutron diffraction measurements. Simulation results for the partial radial distribution functions show that the liquid structure is closely related to that of the crystals. A close similarity between solid and liquid is also found for the electronic density of states and charge density. The calculated electronic conductivity decreases strongly with increasing Se content, in accord with experimental measurements.
We perform ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) simulation of liquid water in the canonical ensemble at ambient conditions using the SCAN meta-GGA functional approximation, and carry out systematic comparisons with the results obtained from the GGA-level PBE functional, and Tkatchenko-Scheffler van der Waals (vdW) dispersion correction inclusive PBE functional. We analyze various properties of liquid water including radial distribution functions, oxygen-oxygen-oxygen triplet angular distribution, tetrahedrality, hydrogen bonds, diffusion coefficients, ring statistics, density of states, band gaps, and dipole moments. We find that the SCAN functional is generally more accurate than the other two functionals for liquid water by not only capturing the intermediate-range vdW interactions but also mitigating the overly strong hydrogen bonds prescribed in PBE simulations. We also compare the results of SCAN-based AIMD simulations in the canonical and isothermal-isobaric ensembles. Our results suggest that SCAN provides a reliable description for most structural, electronic, and dynamical properties in liquid water.
Despite their rich information content, electronic structure data amassed at high volumes in ab initio molecular dynamics simulations are generally under-utilized. We introduce a transferable high-fidelity neural network representation of such data in the form of tight-binding Hamiltonians for crystalline materials. This predictive representation of ab initio electronic structure, combined with machine-learning boosted molecular dynamics, enables efficient and accurate electronic evolution and sampling. When applied to a one-dimension charge-density wave material, carbyne, we are able to compute the spectral function and optical conductivity in the canonical ensemble. The spectral functions evaluated during soliton-antisoliton pair annihilation process reveal significant renormalization of low-energy edge modes due to retarded electron-lattice coupling beyond the Born-Oppenheimer limit. The availability of an efficient and reusable surrogate model for the electronic structure dynamical system will enable calculating many interesting physical properties, paving way to previously inaccessible or challenging avenues in materials modeling.
This work reports on the elastic and electronic properties of the newly discovered superconductor Th2NiC2 (A .Machado, et al., Supercond. Sci. Technol. 25 (2012) 045010) as obtained within ab initio calculations. We found that Th2NiC2 is mechanically stable and it will behave as a ductile material exhibiting enhanced elastic anisotropy in shear and a rather low hardness Our data reveal that for Th2NiC2 the Fermi level is located in a deep DOS minimum and the experimentally observed increase in TC in the sequence Th2NiC2 -> Th1.8Sc0.2NiC2 may be explained by the growth of N(EF). We also speculate that (i) an increase in the hole concentration will promote exchange splitting of Ni 3d bands, therefore the hole-doped Th2NiC2 should have a certain concentration border, where a phase transition from the superconducting to the magnetic state will be expected, and (ii) an increase in N(EF) (and, probably, in TC) for Th2NiC2-based materials may be also achieved by an alternative way: by electron doping - for example, by partial substitution of V for Th or Cu for Ni, as well as by partial substitution of N for C with the formation of Th-Ni carbonitrides like Th2NiC2-xNx.
Resonant photoemission spectroscopy has been used to investigate the character of Fe 3d states in FeAl alloy. Fe 3d states have two different character, first is of itinerant nature located very close to the Fermi level, and second, is of less itinerant (relatively localized character), located beyond 2 eV below the Fermi level. These distinct states are clearly distinguishable in the resonant photoemission data. Comparison between the results obtained from experiments and first principle based electronic structure calculation show that the origin of the itinerant character of the Fe 3d states is due to the ordered B2 structure, whereas the relatively less itinerant (localized) Fe 3d states are from the disorders present in the sample. The exchange splitting of the Fe 3s core level peak confirms the presence of local moment in this system. It is found that the itinerant electrons arise due to the hybridization between Fe 3d and Al 3s-3p states. Presence of hybridization is observed as a shift in the Al 2p core-level spectra as well as in the X-ray near edge absorption spectra towards lower binding energy. Our photoemission results are thus explained by the co-existence of ordered and disordered phases in the system.
We present an ab initio $GW$ self-energy calculation of the electronic structure of LaNiO$_2$. With respect to density-functional theory we find that in $GW$ the La 4$f$ states undergo an important $+$2 eV upward shift from the Fermi level, while the O 2$p$ states are pulled down by $-$1.5 eV, thus reinforcing the charge-transfer character of this material. However, $GW$ many-body effects leave the $d$-like bands at the Fermi level almost unaffected, so that the Fermi-surface topology is preserved, unlike in cuprates.