No Arabic abstract
Accurate low-order structure factors (Fg) measured by quantitative convergent beam electron diffraction (QCBED) were used for validation of different density functional theory (DFT) approximations. 23 low-order Fg were measured by QCBED for the transition metals Cr, Fe, Co, Ni, and Cu, and the transition metal based intermetallic phases {gamma}-TiAl, {beta}-NiAl and {gamma}1-FePd using a multi-beam off-zone axis (MBOZA) method and then compared with Fg calculated ab-initio by DFT using the local spin density approximation (LDA) and LDA+U, and different generalized gradient approximations (GGA) functionals. Different functionals perform very differently for different materials and crystal structures. Among the GGA functionals, PW91 and EV93 achieve the best overall agreement with the experimentally determined low-order Fg for the five metals, while PW91 performs the best for the three intermetallics. The LDA+U approach, through careful selection of U, achieves excellent matches with the experimentally measured Fg for all the metallic systems investigated in this paper. Similar to the band gap for semiconductors, it is proposed that experimentally determined low-order Fg can be used to tune the U term in LDA+U method DFT calculations for metals and intermetallics.
We report the lattice dynamics of transition metal thin films by using the ultrafast electron diffraction. We observe a suppression of the diffraction intensity in a few picosecond after the photoexcitation, which is directly interpreted as the lattice heating via the electron-phonon interaction. The electron-phonon coupling constants for Au, Cu and Mo are quantitatively evaluated by employing the two-temperature model, which are consistent with those obtained by optical pump-probe methods. The variation in the lattice dynamics of the transition metals are systematically explained by the strength of the electron-phonon coupling, arising from the elemental dependence of the electronic structure and atomic mass.
We present an all-electron study of the dynamical density-response function of hexagonal close-packed transition metals Sc and Ti. We elucidate various aspects of the interplay between the crystal structure and the electron dynamics by investigating the loss function, and the associated dielectric function, for wave-vector transfers perpendicular and parallel to the hexagonal plane. As expected, but contrary to recent work, we find that the free-electron-like aspects of the dynamical response are rather isotropic for small wave vectors. The crystal local-field effects are found to have an impact on the plasmon energy for small wave vectors, which gives rise to an interplay with the exchange-correlation effects built into the many-body kernel. The loss function lineshape shows a significant dependence on propagation direction; in particular, for propagation on the hexagonal plane the plasmon hybridizes substantially with fine structure due to d-electron transitions, and its dispersion curve becomes difficult to establish, beyond the small wave vector limit. The response is calculated in the framework of time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT), based on a full-potential linearized augmented-plane-wave (LAPW) ground-state, in which the exchange-correlation effects are treated in the local-density approximation.
An alternative type of approximation for the exchange and correlation functional in density functional theory is proposed. This approximation depends on a variable $u$ that is able to detect inhomogeneities in the electron density $rho$ without using derivatives of $rho$. Instead, $u$ depends on the orbital energies which can also be used to measure how a system differs from the homogeneous electron gas. Starting from the functional of Perdew, Burke, and Ernzerhof (PBE) [Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 3865 (1996)], a functional depending on $u$ is constructed. Tests on the lattice constant, bulk modulus, and cohesive energy of solids show that this $u$-dependent PBE-like functional is on average as accurate as the original PBE or its solid-state version PBEsol. Since $u$ carries more nonlocality than the reduced density gradient $s$ used in functionals of the generalized gradient approximation (GGA) like PBE and $alpha$ used in meta-GGAs, it will be certainly useful for the future development of more accurate exchange-correlation functionals.
We report tests of various density functionals for ferromagnetic, Fe, Co and Ni with a focus on characterizing the behavior of the so-called strongly constrained and appropriately normed (SCAN) functional. It is found that SCAN is closer in behavior to functionals that yield localized behavior, such as hybrid functionals, than other semilocal functionals that are tested. The results are understood in terms of a tendency to differentiate orbitals, favoring integer occupation, which is necessary for a correct description of atomic systems, but inappropriate for the open shell metallic ferromagnetic metals studied here.
We seek to obtain a usable form of the nuclear energy density functional that is rooted in the modern theory of nuclear forces. We thus consider a functional obtained from the density matrix expansion of local nuclear potentials from chiral effective field theory. We propose a parametrization of this functional carefully calibrated and validated on selected ground-state properties that is suitable for large-scale calculations of nuclear properties. The first component of this functional is a non-local functional of the density and corresponds to the direct part (Hartree term) of the expectation value of local chiral potentials on a Slater determinant. A second component is a local functional of the density and is obtained by applying the density matrix expansion to the exchange part (Fock term) of the expectation value of the local chiral potential. We apply the UNEDF2 optimization protocol to determine the coupling constants of this energy functional. We obtain a set of microscopically-constrained functionals for local chiral potentials from leading-order up to next-to-next-to-leading order with and without three-body forces and contributions from $Delta$ excitations. These functionals are validated on the calculation of nuclear and neutron matter, nuclear mass tables, single-particle shell structure in closed-shell nuclei and the fission barrier of $^{240}$Pu. Quantitatively, they perform noticeable better than the more phenomenological Skyrme functionals. The inclusion of higher-order terms in the chiral perturbation expansion seems to produce a systematic improvement in predicting nuclear binding energies. This result is especially promising since all the fits have been performed at the single reference level of the energy density functional approach, where important collective correlations such as center-of-mass correction have not been taken into account yet.