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Andris Gulans

Publications and source records attributed to Andris Gulans.

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Hartree-Fock Limit for Energies in Solids

This study establishes a route to the Hartree--Fock (HF) limit for molecules and solids within the linearized augmented plane wave (LAPW) framework. We remove current limitations of the standard LAPW approach to nonlocal exchange by constructing radial basis functions and core orbitals consistently with the HF Hamiltonian. The presented method yields total energies of molecules and solids with a precision of a few $\mu$Ha, and we use it to provide reference data for 14 semiconductors and insulators. For the systems considered in this study, the standard approach based on (semi)local potentials for constructing radial basis functions and core orbitals remains highly precise for practical relative energies, including molecular and solid-state formation energies and Si self-interstitial defect formation energies. More broadly, the results provide stringent all-electron benchmarks for basis-set and pseudopotential assessment, improve error control in hybrid-functional calculations within LAPW, and open the way to X-ray spectroscopy simulations within LAPW based directly on hybrid-functional core orbitals.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci

An exciting approach to theoretical spectroscopy

Theoretical spectroscopy, and more generally, electronic-structure theory, are powerful concepts for describing the complex many-body interactions in materials. They comprise a variety of methods that can capture all aspects, from ground-state properties to lattice excitations to different types of light-matter interaction, including time-resolved variants. Modern electronic-structure codes implement either a few or several of these methods. Among them, exciting is an all-electron full-potential package that has a very rich portfolio of all levels of theory, with a particular focus on excitations. It implements the linearized augmented planewave plus local orbital (LAPW+LO) basis, which is known as the gold standard for solving the Kohn-Sham equations of density-functional theory (DFT). Based on this, it also offers benchmark-quality results for a wide range of excited-state methods. In this review, we provide a comprehensive overview of the features implemented in exciting in recent years, accompanied by short summaries on the state of the art of the underlying methodologies. They comprise DFT and time-dependent DFT (TDDFT), density-functional perturbation theory (DFPT) for phonons and electron-phonon coupling, and many-body perturbation theory in terms of the $GW$ approach and the Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE). Moreover, exciting can handle resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS), pump-probe spectroscopy as well as exciton-phonon coupling (EXPC). Finally, we cover workflows and a view on data and machine learning (ML). All aspects are demonstrated with examples for scientifically relevant materials.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Precision benchmarks for solids: G0W0 calculations with different basis sets

The GW approximation within many-body perturbation theory is the state of the art for computing quasiparticle energies in solids. Typically, Kohn-Sham (KS) eigenvalues and eigenfunctions, obtained from a Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculation are used as a starting point to build the Green's function G and the screened Coulomb interaction W, yielding the one-shot G0W0 selfenergy if no further update of these quantities are made. Multiple implementations exist for both the DFT and the subsequent G0W0 calculation, leading to possible differences in quasiparticle energies. In the present work, the G0W0 quasiparticle energies for states close to the band gap are calculated for six crystalline solids, using four different codes: Abinit, exciting, FHI-aims, and GPAW. This comparison helps to assess the impact of basis-set types (planewaves versus localized orbitals) and the treatment of core and valence electrons (all-electron full potentials versus pseudopotentials). The impact of unoccupied states as well as the algorithms for solving the quasiparticle equation are also briefly discussed. For the KS-DFT band gaps, we observe good agreement between all codes, with differences not exceeding 0.1 eV, while the G0W0 results deviate on the order of 0.1-0.3 eV. Between all-electron codes (FHI-aims and exciting), the agreement is better than 15 meV for KS-DFT and, with one exception, about 0.1 eV for G0W0 band gaps.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Scalar relativistic effects with Multiwavelets: Implementation and benchmark

The importance of relativistic effects in quantum chemistry is widely recognized, not only for heavier elements but throughout the periodic table. At the same time, relativistic effect are strongest in the nuclear region, where the description of electrons through linear combination of atomic orbitals becomes more challenging. Furthermore, the choice of basis sets for heavier elements is limited compared to lighter elements where precise basis sets are available. Thanks to the framework of multiresolution analysis, multiwavelets provide an appealing alternative to overcome this challenge: they lead to robust error control and adaptive algorithms that automatically refine the basis set description until the desired precision is reached. This allows to achieve a proper description of the nuclear region. In this work we extended the Multiwavelet-based code MRChem to the scalar zero-order regular approximation (ZORA) framework. We validated our implementation comparing the total energies for a small set of elements and molecules. To confirm the validity of our implementation, we compared both against a radial numerical code for atoms and the plane-wave based code exciting.

physics.chem-ph

Accurate and efficient treatment of spin-orbit coupling via second variation employing local orbitals

A new method is presented that allows for efficient evaluation of spin-orbit coupling (SOC) in density-functional theory calculations. In the so-called second-variational scheme, where Kohn-Sham functions obtained in a scalar-relativistic calculation are employed as a new basis for the spin-orbit-coupled problem, we introduce a rich set of local orbitals as additional basis functions. Also relativistic local orbitals can be used. The method is implemented in the all-electron full-potential code \exciting. We show that, for materials with strong SOC effects, this approach can reduce the overall basis-set size and thus computational costs tremendously.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Roadmap on Electronic Structure Codes in the Exascale Era

Electronic structure calculations have been instrumental in providing many important insights into a range of physical and chemical properties of various molecular and solid-state systems. Their importance to various fields, including materials science, chemical sciences, computational chemistry and device physics, is underscored by the large fraction of available public supercomputing resources devoted to these calculations. As we enter the exascale era, exciting new opportunities to increase simulation numbers, sizes, and accuracies present themselves. In order to realize these promises, the community of electronic structure software developers will however first have to tackle a number of challenges pertaining to the efficient use of new architectures that will rely heavily on massive parallelism and hardware accelerators. This roadmap provides a broad overview of the state-of-the-art in electronic structure calculations and of the various new directions being pursued by the community. It covers 14 electronic structure codes, presenting their current status, their development priorities over the next five years, and their plans towards tackling the challenges and leveraging the opportunities presented by the advent of exascale computing.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Adaptively compressed exchange in LAPW

We present an implementation of the adaptively compressed exchange (ACE) operator in the LAPW formalism. ACE is a low-rank representation of the Fock exchange that avoids any loss of precision for the total energy. Our study shows that this property remains in the all-electron case, as we apply this method in non-relativistic total-energy calculations with a hybrid exchange-correlation functional PBE0. The obtained data for light atoms and molecules are within a few $μ$Ha off the precise multi-resolution-analysis calculations. Aside from ACE, another key ingredient to achieve such a high precision with Fock exchange was the use of high-energy local orbitals. Finally, we use this implementation to calculate PBE0 gaps in solids and compare the results to other all-electron results.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Radial Kohn-Sham problem via integral-equation approach

We present a numerical tool for solving the non-relativistic Kohn-Sham problem for spherically-symmetric atoms. It treats the Schrödinger equation as an integral equation relying heavily on convolutions. The solver supports different types of exchange-correlation functionals including screened and long-range corrected hybrids. We implement a new method for treating range separation based on the complementary error function kernel. The present tool is applied in non-relativistic total energy calculations of atoms. A comparison with ultra-precise reference data[Cinal, JOMC 58, 1571 (2020)] shows a 14-digit agreement for Hartree-Fock results. We provide further benchmark data obtained with 5 different exchange-correlation functionals.

physics.atm-clus

Influence of spin-orbit coupling on chemical bonding

The influence of spin-orbit interaction on chemical bonds in elemental solids and homonuclear dimers is analyzed by means of density-functional-theory calculations. Employing highly precise all-electron full-potential methodology, our results represent benchmark quality. Comparison of the scalar- and fully-relativistic approaches for elemental solids shows that the spin-orbit interaction may contract or expand the volume of the considered material. The largest variation of the volume is obtained for Au, Tl, I, Bi, Po and Hg, exhibiting changes between 1.0--7.6\%. Using the tight-binding model, we show for diatomic molecules that the nature of this effect lies in the angular rearrangement of bonding and antibonding orbitals introduced by spin-orbit coupling. Such an angular rearrangement appears in partially filled $p$- or $d$-orbitals in heavy elements. Finally, we discuss the impact of the relativistic effects on the chemical bonding in single-layer iodides and transition metal dichalcogenides

cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Numerical Quality Control for DFT-based Materials Databases

Electronic-structure theory is a strong pillar of materials science. Many different computer codes that employ different approaches are used by the community to solve various scientific problems. Still, the precision of different packages has only recently been scrutinized thoroughly, focusing on a specific task, namely selecting a popular density functional, and using unusually high, extremely precise numerical settings for investigating 71 monoatomic crystals. Little is known, however, about method- and code-specific uncertainties that arise under numerical settings that are commonly used in practice. We shed light on this issue by investigating the deviations in total and relative energies as a function of computational parameters. Using typical settings for basis sets and k-grids, we compare results for 71 elemental and 63 binary solids obtained by three different electronic-structure codes that employ fundamentally different strategies. On the basis of the observed trends, we propose a simple, analytical model for the estimation of the errors associated with the basis-set incompleteness. We cross-validate this model using ternary systems obtained from the NOMAD Repository and discuss how our approach enables the comparison of the heterogeneous data present in computational materials databases.

physics.comp-ph

Work-function modification of PEG(thiol) adsorbed on the Au(111) surface: A first-principles study

The possibility of modifying the work function of electrodes is important for optimizing the energy barriers for charge-injection (extraction) at the interface to an organic material. In this study, we perform density-functional-theory calculations to investigate the impact of dithiol-terminated polyethylene glycol (PEG(thiol)) based self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) with different numbers of PEG repeat units on the work function of the Au(111) surface. We find that a monolayer of PEG(thiol) decreases the work function of the Au(111) surface, where the magnitude of this reduction strongly depends on the length of the PEG backbone. The main contribution arises from the dipole due to the adsorption-induced charge rearrangement at the interface. Our work reveals a pronounced odd-even effect, which can be traced back to the dipole moment of the PEG(thiol) layer.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Robust mixing in self-consistent linearized augmented planewave calculations

We devise a mixing algorithm for full-potential (FP) all-electron calculations in the linearized augmented planewave (LAPW) method. Pulay's direct inversion in the iterative subspace is complemented with the Kerker preconditioner and further improvements to achieve smooth convergence, avoiding charge sloshing and noise in the exchange-correlation potential. As the Kerker preconditioner was originally designed for the planewave basis, we have adapted it to the FP-LAPW method and implemented in the exciting code. Applications to the $2\times 2$ Au(111) surface with a vacancy and to the Pd(111) surface demonstrate that this approach and our implementation work reliably with both density and potential mixing.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Maximally localized Wannier functions within the (L)APW+LO method

We present a robust algorithm that computes (maximally localized) Wannier functions (WFs) without the need of providing an initial guess. Instead, a suitable starting point is constructed automatically from so-called local orbitals which are fundamental building blocks of the basis set within (linearized) augmented planewave methods. Our approach is applied to a vast variety of materials such as metals, bulk and low-dimensional semiconductors, and complex inorganic-organic hybrid interfaces. For the interpolation of electronic single-particle energies, an accuracy in the meV range can be easily achieved. We exemplify the capabilities of our method by the calculation of the joint density of states in aluminum, (generalized) Kohn-Sham and quasi-particle band structures in various semiconductors, and the electronic structure of $β$-Ga$_2$O$_3$, including electron and hole effective masses.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Electronic and optical excitations at the pyridine/ZnO(10$\overline{1}$0) hybrid interface

By combining all-electron density-functional theory with many-body perturbation theory, we investigate a prototypical inorganic/organic hybrid system, composed of pyridine molecules that are chemisorbed on the non-polar ZnO($10\overline{1}0$) surface. We employ the $G_0W_0$ approximation to describe its one-particle excitations in terms of the quasi-particle band structure, and solve the Bethe-Salpeter equation for obtaining the absorption spectrum. The different character of the constituents leads to very diverse self-energy corrections of individual Kohn-Sham states, and thus the $G_0W_0$ band structure is distinctively different from its DFT counterpart, i.e., many-body effects cannot be regarded as a rigid shift of the conduction bands. We explore the nature of the optical excitations at the interface over a wide energy range and show that various kinds of electron-hole pairs are formed, comprising hybrid excitons and (hybrid) charge-transfer excitations. The absorption onset is characterized by a strongly bound bright ZnO-dominated hybrid exciton. For selected examples of either exciton type, we analyze the individual contributions from the valence and conduction bands and discuss the binding strength and extension of the electron-hole wavefunctions.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci

The LDA-1/2 method applied to atoms and molecules

The LDA-1/2 method has proven to be a viable approach for calculating band gaps of semiconductors. To address its accuracy for finite systems, we apply LDA-1/2 to atoms and the molecules of the $GW100$ test set. The obtained energies of the highest-occupied molecular orbitals are validated against CCSD(T) data and the $G_0W_0$ approach of many-body perturbation theory. The accuracy of LDA-1/2 and $G_0W_0$ is found to be the same, where the latter is computationally much more involved. To get insight into the benefits and limitations of the LDA-1/2 method, we analyze the impact of each assumption made in deriving the methodology.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Microhartree Precision in Density-Functional-Theory Calculations

To address ultimate precision in density-functional-theory calculations we employ the full-potential linearized augmented planewave + local-orbital (LAPW+lo) method and justify its usage as a benchmark method. LAPW+lo and two completely unrelated numerical approaches, multi-resolution analysis (MRA) and linear combination of atomic orbitals, yield total energies of atoms with a mean deviation of 0.9~μHa and 0.2~μHa, respectively. Spectacular agreement with the MRA is reached also for total and atomization energies of the G2-1 set consisting of 55 molecules. With the example of $α$-iron we demonstrate the capability of LAPW+lo of reaching μHa/atom precision also for periodic systems, which allows also for distinction between numerical precision and the accuracy of a given functional.

physics.comp-ph

Accurate all-electron $G_0W_0$ quasiparticle energies employing the full-potential augmented planewave method

The $GW$ approach of many-body perturbation theory (MBPT) has become a common tool for calculating the electronic structure of materials. However, with increasing number of published results, discrepancies between the values obtained by different methods and codes become more and more apparent. For a test set of small- and wide-gap semiconductors, we demonstrate how to reach the numerically \emph{best} electronic structure within the framework of the full-potential linearized augmented planewave (FLAPW) method. We first evaluate the impact of local orbitals in the Kohn-Sham eigenvalue spectrum of the underlying starting point. The role of the basis-set quality is then further analyzed when calculating the $G_0W_0$ quasiparticle energies. Our results, computed with the \exciting{} code, are compared to those obtained using the projector-augmented planewave (PAW) formalism, finding overall, good agreement between both methods. We also provide data produced with a typical FLAPW basis set as a benchmark for other $G_0W_0$ implementations.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Adsorption structures of phenol on the Si(001)-(2 \times 1) surface calculated using density functional theory

Several dissociated and two non-dissociated adsorption structures of the phenol molecule on the Si(001)-(2 \times 1) surface are studied using density functional theory with various exchange and correlation functionals. The relaxed structures and adsorption energies are obtained and it is found that the dissociated structures are energetically more favourable than the non-dissociated structures. However, the ground state energies alone do not determine which structure is obtained experimentally. To elucidate the situation core level shift spectra for Si 2p and C 1s states are simulated and compared with experimentally measured spectra. Several transition barriers were calculated in order to determine which adsorption structures are kinetically accessible. Based on these results we conclude that the molecule undergoes the dissociation of two hydrogen atoms on adsorption.

physics.comp-ph