No Arabic abstract
We present a fully variational generalization of the pseudo self-interaction correction (VPSIC) approach previously presented in two implementations based on plane-waves and atomic orbital basis set, known as PSIC and ASIC, respectively. The new method is essentially equivalent to the previous version for what concern the electronic properties, but it can be exploited to calculate total-energy derived properties as well, such as forces and structural optimization. We apply the method to a variety of test cases including both non-magnetic and magnetic correlated oxides and molecules, showing a generally good accuracy in the description of both structural and electronic properties.
We present a first-principles theoretical approach for evaluating the lattice thermal conductivity based on the exact solution of the Boltzmann transport equation. We use the variational principle and the conjugate gradient scheme, which provide us with an algorithm faster than the one previously used in literature and able to always converge to the exact solution. Three-phonon normal and umklapp collision, isotope scattering and border effects are rigorously treated in the calculation. Good agreement with experimental data for diamond is found. Moreover we show that by growing more enriched diamond samples it is possible to achieve values of thermal conductivity up to three times larger than the commonly observed in isotopically enriched diamond samples with 99.93% C12 and 0.07 C13.
The simulation of transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images or diffraction patterns is often required to interpret their contrast and extract specimen features. This is especially true for high-resolution phase-contrast imaging of materials, but electron scattering simulations based on atomistic models are widely used in materials science and structural biology. Since electron scattering is dominated by the nuclear cores, the scattering potential is typically described by the widely applied independent atom model. This approximation is fast and fairly accurate, especially for scanning TEM (STEM) annular dark-field contrast, but it completely neglects valence bonding and its effect on the transmitting electrons. However, an emerging trend in electron microscopy is to use new instrumentation and methods to extract the maximum amount of information from each electron. This is evident in the increasing popularity of techniques such as 4D-STEM combined with ptychography in materials science, and cryogenic microcrystal electron diffraction in structural biology, where subtle differences in the scattering potential may be both measurable and contain additional insights. Thus, there is increasing interest in electron scattering simulations based on electrostatic potentials obtained from first principles, mainly via density functional theory, which was previously mainly required for holography. In this Review, we discuss the motivation and basis for these developments, survey the pioneering work that has been published thus far, and give our outlook for the future. We argue that a physically better justified $textit{ab initio}$ description of the scattering potential is both useful and viable for an increasing number of systems, and we expect such simulations to steadily gain in popularity and importance.
Electron-phonon ($e$-ph) interactions are pervasive in condensed matter, governing phenomena such as transport, superconductivity, charge-density waves, polarons and metal-insulator transitions. First-principles approaches enable accurate calculations of $e$-ph interactions in a wide range of solids. However, they remain an open challenge in correlated electron systems (CES), where density functional theory often fails to describe the ground state. Therefore reliable $e$-ph calculations remain out of reach for many transition metal oxides, high-temperature superconductors, Mott insulators, planetary materials and multiferroics. Here we show first-principles calculations of $e$-ph interactions in CES, using the framework of Hubbard-corrected density functional theory (DFT+$U$ ) and its linear response extension (DFPT+$U$), which can describe the electronic structure and lattice dynamics of many CES. We showcase the accuracy of this approach for a prototypical Mott system, CoO, carrying out a detailed investigation of its $e$-ph interactions and electron spectral functions. While standard DFPT gives unphysically divergent and short-ranged $e$-ph interactions, DFPT+$U$ is shown to remove the divergences and properly account for the long-range Frohlich interaction, allowing us to model polaron effects in a Mott insulator. Our work establishes a broadly applicable and affordable approach for quantitative studies of e-ph interactions in CES, a novel theoretical tool to interpret experiments in this broad class of materials.
The Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) based on GW quasiparticle levels is a successful approach for calculating the optical gaps and spectra of solids and also for predicting the neutral excitations of small molecules. We here present an all-electron implementation of the GW+BSE formalism for molecules, using numeric atom-centered orbital (NAO) basis sets. We present benchmarks for low-lying excitation energies for a set of small organic molecules, denoted in the literature as Thiels set. Literature reference data based on Gaussian-type orbitals are reproduced to about one meV precision for the molecular benchmark set, when using the same GW quasiparticle energies and basis sets as the input to the BSE calculations. For valence correlation consistent NAO basis sets, as well as for standard NAO basis sets for ground state density-functional theory with extended augmentation functions, we demonstrate excellent convergence of the predicted low-lying excitations to the complete basis set limit. A simple and affordable augmented NAO basis set denoted tier2+aug2 is recommended as a particularly efficient formulation for production calculations. We finally demonstrate that the same convergence properties also apply to linear-response time-dependent density functional theory within the NAO formalism.
We extend the recently developed converse NMR approach [T. Thonhauser, D. Ceresoli, A. Mostofi, N. Marzari, R. Resta, and D. Vanderbilt, J. Chem. Phys. textbf{131}, 101101 (2009)] such that it can be used in conjunction with norm-conserving, non-local pseudopotentials. This extension permits the efficient ab-initio calculation of NMR chemical shifts for elements other than hydrogen within the convenience of a plane-wave pseudopotential approach. We have tested our approach on several finite and periodic systems, finding very good agreement with established methods and experimental results.