arXiv subjects

Jeng-Da Chai

Publications and source records attributed to Jeng-Da Chai.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2016

Assessment of the LFAs-PBE exchange-correlation potential for high-order harmonic generation of aligned H2+ molecules

We examine the performance of our recently developed LFAs-PBE exchange-correlation (XC) potential [C.-R. Pan, P.-T. Fang, and J.-D. Chai, Phys. Rev. A, 2013, 87, 052510] for the high-order harmonic generation (HHG) spectra and related properties of H2+ molecules aligned parallel and perpendicular to the polarization of an intense linearly polarized laser pulse, employing the real-time formulation of time-dependent density functional theory (RT-TDDFT). The results are compared with the exact solutions of the time-dependent Schrodinger equation as well as those obtained with other XC potentials in RT-TDDFT. Owing to its correct (-1/r) asymptote, the LFAs-PBE potential significantly outperforms conventional XC potentials for the HHG spectra and the properties that are sensitive to the XC potential asymptote. Accordingly, the LFAs-PBE potential, which has a computational cost similar to that of the popular Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) potential, can be very promising for the study of the ground-state, excited-state, and time-dependent properties of large electronic systems, extending the applicability of density functional methods for a diverse range of applications.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2016

SCAN-based hybrid and double-hybrid density functionals from models without fitted parameters

By incorporating the nonempirical SCAN semilocal density functional [Sun, Ruzsinszky, and Perdew, Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 036402 (2015)] in the underlying expression of four existing hybrid and double-hybrid models, we propose one hybrid (SCAN0) and three double-hybrid (SCAN0-DH, SCAN-QIDH, and SCAN0-2) density functionals, which are free from any fitted parameters. The SCAN-based double-hybrid functionals consistently outperform their parent SCAN semilocal functional for self-interaction problems and noncovalent interactions. In particular, SCAN0-2, which includes about 79% of Hartree-Fock exchange and 50% of second-order Moller-Plesset correlation, is shown to be reliably accurate for a very diverse range of applications, such as thermochemistry, kinetics, noncovalent interactions, and self-interaction problems.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2015

Van der Waals interactions in rare-gas dimers: The role of interparticle interactions

We investigate the potential energy curves of rare-gas dimers with various ranges and strengths of interparticle interactions (nuclear-electron, electron-electron, and nuclear-nuclear interactions). Our investigation is based on the highly accurate coupled-cluster theory associated with those interparticle interactions. For comparison, the performance of the corresponding Hartree-Fock theory, second-order Moller-Plesset perturbation theory, and density functional theory is also investigated. Our results reveal that when the interparticle interactions retain the long-range Coulomb tails, the nature of van der Waals interactions in the rare-gas dimers remains similar. By contrast, when the interparticle interactions are sufficiently short-range, the conventional van der Waals interactions in the rare-gas dimers completely disappear, yielding purely repulsive potential energy curves.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2015

Assessment of Density Functional Methods for Exciton Binding Energies and Related Optoelectronic Properties

The exciton binding energy, the energy required to dissociate an excited electron-hole pair into free charge carriers, is one of the key factors to the optoelectronic performance of organic materials. However, it remains unclear whether modern quantum-mechanical calculations, mostly based on Kohn-Sham density functional theory (KS-DFT) and time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT), are reliably accurate for exciton binding energies. In this study, the exciton binding energies and related optoelectronic properties (e.g., the ionization potentials, electron affinities, fundamental gaps, and optical gaps) of 121 small- to medium-sized molecules are calculated using KS-DFT and TDDFT with various density functionals. Our KS-DFT and TDDFT results are compared with those calculated using highly accurate CCSD and EOM-CCSD methods, respectively. The omegaB97, omegaB97X, and omegaB97X-D functionals are shown to generally outperform (with a mean absolute error of 0.36 eV) other functionals for the properties investigated.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2014

Assessment of asymptotically corrected model potential scheme for charge-transfer-like excitations in oligoacenes

We examine the performance of the asymptotically corrected model potential scheme on the two lowest singlet excitation energies of acenes with different number of linearly fused benzene rings (up to 5), employing both the real-time time-dependent density functional theory and the frequency-domain formulation of linear-response time-dependent density functional theory. The results are compared with the experimental data and those calculated by long-range corrected hybrid functionals and others. The long-range corrected hybrid scheme is shown to outperform the asymptotically corrected model potential scheme for charge-transfer-like excitations.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2014

Thermally-assisted-occupation density functional theory with generalized-gradient approximations

We extend the recently proposed thermally-assisted-occupation density functional theory (TAO-DFT) [J.-D. Chai, J. Chem. Phys. 136, 154104 (2012)] to generalized-gradient approximation (GGA) exchange-correlation density functionals. Relative to our previous TAO-LDA (i.e., the local density approximation to TAO-DFT), the resulting TAO-GGAs are significantly superior for a wide range of applications, such as thermochemistry, kinetics, and reaction energies. For noncovalent interactions, TAO-GGAs with empirical dispersion corrections are shown to yield excellent performance. Due to their computational efficiency for systems with strong static correlation effects, TAO-LDA and TAO-GGAs are applied to study the electronic properties (e.g., the singlet-triplet energy gaps, vertical ionization potentials, vertical electron affinities, fundamental gaps, and symmetrized von Neumann entropy) of acenes with different number of linearly fused benzene rings (up to 100), which is very challenging for conventional electronic structure methods. The ground states of acenes are shown to be singlets for all the chain lengths studied here. With the increase of acene length, the singlet-triplet energy gaps, vertical ionization potentials, and fundamental gaps decrease monotonically, while the vertical electron affinities and symmetrized von Neumann entropy (i.e., a measure of polyradical character) increase monotonically.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2013

Asymptotic Correction Schemes for Semilocal Exchange-Correlation Functionals

Aiming to remedy the incorrect asymptotic behavior of conventional semilocal exchange-correlation (XC) density functionals for finite systems, we propose an asymptotic correction scheme, wherein an exchange density functional whose functional derivative has the correct (-1/r) asymptote can be directly added to any semilocal density functional. In contrast to semilocal approximations, our resulting exchange kernel in reciprocal space exhibits the desirable singularity of the type O(-1/q^2) as q -> 0, which is a necessary feature for describing the excitonic effects in non-metallic solids. By applying this scheme to a popular semilocal density functional, PBE [J. P. Perdew, K. Burke, and M. Ernzerhof, Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 3865 (1996)], the predictions of the properties that are sensitive to the asymptote are significantly improved, while the predictions of the properties that are insensitive to the asymptote remain essentially the same as PBE. Relative to the popular model XC potential scheme, our scheme is significantly superior for ground-state energies and related properties. In addition, without loss of accuracy, two closely related schemes are developed for the efficient treatment of large systems.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2013

Assessment of density functional methods with correct asymptotic behavior

Long-range corrected (LC) hybrid functionals and asymptotically corrected (AC) model potentials are two distinct density functional methods with correct asymptotic behavior. They are known to be accurate for properties that are sensitive to the asymptote of the exchange-correlation potential, such as the highest occupied molecular orbital energies and Rydberg excitation energies of molecules. To provide a comprehensive comparison, we investigate the performance of the two schemes and others on a very wide range of applications, including the asymptote problems, self-interaction-error problems, energy-gap problems, charge-transfer problems, and many others. The LC hybrid scheme is shown to consistently outperform the AC model potential scheme. In addition, to be consistent with the molecules collected in the IP131 database [Y.-S. Lin, C.-W. Tsai, G.-D. Li, and J.-D. Chai, J. Chem. Phys., 2012, 136, 154109], we expand the EA115 and FG115 databases to include, respectively, the vertical electron affinities and fundamental gaps of the additional 16 molecules, and develop a new database AE113 (113 atomization energies), consisting of accurate reference values for the atomization energies of the 113 molecules in IP131. These databases will be useful for assessing the accuracy of density functional methods.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2012

Restoration of the Derivative Discontinuity in Kohn-Sham Density Functional Theory: An Efficient Scheme for Energy Gap Correction

From the perspective of perturbation theory, we propose a systematic procedure for the evaluation of the derivative discontinuity (DD) of the exchange-correlation energy functional in Kohn-Sham density functional theory (KS-DFT), wherein the exact DD can in principle be obtained by summing up all the perturbation corrections to infinite order. Truncation of the perturbation series at low order yields an efficient scheme for obtaining the approximate DD. While the zeroth-order theory yields a vanishing DD, the first-order correction to the DD can be expressed as an explicit universal functional of the ground-state density and the KS lowest unoccupied molecular orbital density, allowing the direct evaluation of the DD in the standard KS method without extra computational cost. The fundamental gap can be predicted by adding the estimated DD to the KS gap. This scheme is shown to be accurate in the prediction of the fundamental gaps for a wide variety of atoms and molecules.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2012

Long-Range Corrected Hybrid Density Functionals with Improved Dispersion Corrections

By incorporating the improved empirical atom-atom dispersion corrections from DFT-D3 [Grimme, S.; Antony, J.; Ehrlich, S.; Krieg, H. J. Chem. Phys. 2010, 132, 154104], two long-range corrected (LC) hybrid density functionals are proposed. Our resulting LC hybrid functionals, omegaM06-D3 and omegaB97X-D3, are shown to be accurate for a very wide range of applications, such as thermochemistry, kinetics, noncovalent interactions, frontier orbital energies, fundamental gaps, and long-range charge-transfer excitations, when compared with common global and LC hybrid functionals. Relative to omegaB97X-D [Chai, J.-D.; Head-Gordon, M. Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 2008, 10, 6615], omegaB97X-D3 (reoptimization of omegaB97X-D with improved dispersion corrections) is shown to be superior for non-bonded interactions, and similar in performance for bonded interactions, while omegaM06-D3 is shown to be superior for general applications.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2012

Seeking for reliable double-hybrid density functionals without fitting parameters: The PBE0-2 functional

Without the use of any empirical fitting to experimental or high-level ab initio data, we present a double-hybrid density functional approximation for the exchange-correlation energy, combining the exact Hartree-Fock exchange and second-order Moller-Plesset (MP2) correlation with the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) functional. This functional, denoted as PBE0-2, is shown to be accurate for a wide range of applications, when compared with other functionals and the ab initio MP2 method. The qualitative failures of conventional density functional approximations, such as self-interaction error and noncovalent interaction error, are significantly reduced by PBE0-2.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2012

Assessment of density functional approximations for the hemibonded structure of water dimer radical cation

Due to the severe self-interaction errors associated with some density functional approximations, conventional density functionals often fail to dissociate the hemibonded structure of water dimer radical cation (H2O)2+ into the correct fragments: H2O and H2O+. Consequently, the binding energy of the hemibonded structure (H2O)2+ is not well-defined. For a comprehensive comparison of different functionals for this system, we propose three criteria: (i) The binding energies, (ii) the relative energies between the conformers of the water dimer radical cation, and (iii) the dissociation curves predicted by different functionals. The long-range corrected (LC) double-hybrid functional, omegaB97X-2(LP) [J.-D. Chai and M. Head-Gordon, J. Chem. Phys., 2009, 131, 174105.], is shown to perform reasonably well based on these three criteria. Reasons that LC hybrid functionals generally work better than conventional density functionals for hemibonded systems are also explained in this work.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2012

Long-range corrected hybrid meta-generalized-gradient approximations with dispersion corrections

We propose a long-range corrected hybrid meta-GGA functional, based on a global hybrid meta-GGA functional, M05 [Y. Zhao, N. E. Schultz, and D. G. Truhlar, J. Chem. Phys. 123, 161103 (2005)], and empirical atom-atom dispersion corrections. Our resulting functional, omegaM05-D, is shown to be accurate for a very wide range of applications, such as thermochemistry, kinetics, noncovalent interactions, equilibrium geometries, frontier orbital energies, fundamental gaps, and excitation energies. In addition, we present three new databases, IP131 (131 ionization potentials), EA115 (115 electron affinities), and FG115 (115 fundamental gaps), consisting of experimental molecular geometries and accurate reference values, which will be useful in the assessment of the accuracy of density functional approximations.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2012

Density functional theory with fractional orbital occupations

In contrast to the original Kohn-Sham (KS) formalism, we propose a density functional theory (DFT) with fractional orbital occupations for the study of ground states of many-electron systems, wherein strong static correlation is shown to be described. Even at the simplest level represented by the local density approximation (LDA), our resulting DFT-LDA is shown to improve upon KS-LDA for multi-reference systems, such as dissociation of H2 and N2, and twisted ethylene, while performing similarly to KS-LDA for single-reference systems, such as reaction energies and equilibrium geometries. Because of its computational efficiency (similar to KS-LDA), this DFT-LDA is applied to the study of the singlet-triplet energy gaps (ST gaps) of acenes, which are "challenging problems" for conventional electronic structure methods due to the presence of strong static correlation effects. Our calculated ST gaps are in good agreement with the existing experimental and high-level ab initio data. The ST gaps are shown to decrease monotonically with the increase of chain length, and become vanishingly small (within 0.1 kcal/mol) in the limit of an infinitely large polyacene. In addition, based on our calculated active orbital occupation numbers, the ground states for large acenes are shown to be polyradical singlets.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2011

Significant Role of DNA Backbone in Mediating the Transition Origin of Electronic Excitations of B-DNA - Implication from Long Range Corrected TDDFT and Quantified NTO Analysis

We systematically investigate the possible complex transition origin of electronic excitations of giant molecular systems by using the recently proposed QNTO analysis [J.-H. Li, J.-D. Chai, G. Y. Guo and M. Hayashi, Chem. Phys. Lett., 2011, 514, 362.] combined with long-range corrected TDDFT calculations. Thymine (Thy) related excitations of biomolecule B-DNA are then studied as examples, where the model systems have been constructed extracting from the perfect or a X-ray crystal (PDB code 3BSE) B-DNA structure with at least one Thy included. In the first part, we consider the systems composed of a core molecular segment (e.g. Thy, di-Thy) and a surrounding physical/chemical environment of interest (e.g. backbone, adjacent stacking nucleobases) and examine how the excitation properties of the core vary in response to the environment. We find that the orbitals contributed from DNA backbone and surrounding nucleobases often participate in a transition of Thy-related excitations affecting their composition, absorption energy, and oscillator strength. In the second part, we take into account geometrically induced variation of the excitation properties of various B-DNA segments, e.g. di-Thy, dTpdT etc., obtained from different sources (ideal and 3BSE). It is found that the transition origin of several Thy-related excitations of these segments is sensitive to slight conformational variations, suggesting that DNA with thermal motions in cells may from time to time exhibit very different photo-induced physical and/or chemical processes.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2011

The Quantified NTO Analysis for the Electronic Excitations of Molecular Many-Body Systems

We show that the origin of electronic transitions of molecular many-body systems can be revealed by a quantified natural transition orbitals (QNTO) analysis and the electronic excitations of the total system can be mapped onto a standard orbitals set of a reference system. We further illustrate QNTO on molecular systems by studying the origin of electronic transitions of DNA moiety, thymine and thymidine. This QNTO analysis also allows us to assess the performance of various functionals used in time-dependent density functional response theory.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2009

Orbital-Free Density Functional Theory: Linear Scaling Methods for Kinetic Potentials, and Applications to Solid Al and S

In orbital-free density functional theory the kinetic potential (KP), the functional derivative of the kinetic energy density functional, appears in the Euler equation for the electron density and may be more amenable to simple approximations. We study properties of two solid-state systems, Al and Si, using two nonlocal KPs that gave good results for atoms. Very accurate results are found for Al, but results for Si are much less satisfactory, illustrating the general need for a better treatment of extended covalent systems. A different integration pathway in the KP formalism may prove useful in attacking this fundamental problem.

cond-mat.other↗

arXiv2007

Orbital-Free Density Functional Theory: Kinetic Potentials and Ab-Initio Local Pseudopotentials

In the density functional (DF) theory of Kohn and Sham, the kinetic energy of the ground state of a system of noninteracting electrons in a general external field is calculated using a set of orbitals. Orbital free methods attempt to calculate this directly from the electron density by approximating the universal but unknown kinetic energy density functional. However simple local approximations are inaccurate and it has proved very difficult to devise generally accurate nonlocal approximations. We focus instead on the kinetic potential, the functional derivative of the kinetic energy DF, which appears in the Euler equation for the electron density. We argue that the kinetic potential is more local and more amenable to simple physically motivated approximations in many relevant cases, and describe two pathways by which the value of the kinetic energy can be efficiently calculated. We propose two nonlocal orbital free kinetic potentials that reduce to known exact forms for both slowly varying and rapidly varying perturbations and also reproduce exact results for the linear response of the density of the homogeneous system to small perturbations. A simple and systematic approach for generating accurate and weak ab-initio local pseudopotentials which produce a smooth slowly varying valence component of the electron density is proposed for use in orbital free DF calculations of molecules and solids. The use of these local pseudopotentials further minimizes the possible errors from the kinetic potentials. Our theory yields results for the total energies and ionization energies of atoms, and for the shell structure in the atomic radial density profiles that are in very good agreement with calculations using the full Kohn-Sham theory.

cond-mat.str-el↗