arXiv subjects

Mauro Del Ben

Publications and source records attributed to Mauro Del Ben.

15 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Many-Body Correlation Effects in Fröhlich Electron-Phonon Coupling

In compound semiconductors and insulators, the polar electron-phonon coupling diverges at long range, known as the Fröhlich interaction. Modern first-principles electron-phonon calculations treat the Fröhlich interaction in a semiclassical electrostatic formalism based on density-functional perturbation theory. Here, using many-body $GW$ perturbation theory, we reveal important electron correlation effects in the Fröhlich-type electron-phonon coupling, which are missed by the prevailing approaches and rooted in the fundamentally distinct behavior between quasiparticle self-energy and semi-local exchange-correlation functionals in the long-range limit. Going beyond the electrostatic treatment, we derive and implement the $GW$ self-energy contribution to the long-range polar electron-phonon coupling, and demonstrate its critical role and nontrivial behaviors in properties such as electron linewidth and polaron formation in several prototype semiconductors. Remarkably, calculations on photoemission kink in electron-doped TiO$_2$ achieve excellent agreement with experiment. Our work establishes the many-body generalization of the Fröhlich interaction that is essential for accurate electron-phonon calculations at the full $GW$ level combined with Wannier interpolation techniques.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2026

Ab initio time-dependent GW approach for nonequilibrium exciton-phonon coupled dynamics across momentum space

The dynamics of optical excitations in materials generally involves intertwined electron-hole (e-h) and electron-phonon (e-ph) interactions out of equilibrium. However, a full theoretical description of such nonequilibrium dynamics requires a systematic treatment of the coherent excitonic excitations and exciton-phonon interactions across the entire crystal momentum space in real time, which remains a major challenge and out of reach for first-principles approaches. Here, we present a new ab initio time-dependent adiabatic GW methodology that incorporates full finite-momentum e-h and e-ph couplings, enabling real-time simulations of the coherently coupled exciton-phonon dynamics. The excitonic excitations are naturally described by the equation of motion of the interacting single-particle density matrix, whereas their couplings to phonons are formulated within a linear-response framework, hence the simulations can be efficiently carried out within a primitive unit cell. We demonstrate the capabilities of this new approach by investigating the direct-to-indirect exciton transitions in monolayer WSe2 in a pump-probe setup of time-resolved and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. Our results reveal that the phonon-mediated ultrafast intervalley dynamics of excitons of this system is within ~0.5 ps, manifested as in-gap photoemission intensity transfer from the K-valley to the Q-valley. This work establishes a comprehensive and practical nonequilibrium Green's function framework for accurately simulating nonequilibrium and coherent excitations involving coupled excitons and phonons from first principles.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2026

StochasticGW-GPU: rapid quasi-particle energies for molecules beyond 10000 atoms

$\mathtt{StochasticGW}$ is a code for computing accurate Quasi-Particle (QP) energies of molecules and material systems in the GW approximation. $\mathtt{StochasticGW}$ utilizes the stochastic Resolution of the Identity (sROI) technique to enable a massively-parallel implementation with computational costs that scale semi-linearly with system size, allowing the method to access systems with tens of thousands of electrons. We introduce a new implementation, $\mathtt{StochasticGW-GPU}$, for which the main bottleneck steps have been ported to GPUs and which gives substantial performance improvements over previous versions of the code. We showcase the new code by computing band gaps of hydrogenated silicon clusters ($\textrm{S}\textrm{i}_{\textrm{x}}\textrm{H}_{\textrm{y}}$) containing up to 10001 atoms and 35144 electrons, and we obtain individual QP energies with a statistical precision of better than $\pm0.03$ eV with times-to-solution on the order of minutes.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2025

Advancing Quantum Many-Body GW Calculations on Exascale Supercomputing Platforms

Advanced ab initio materials simulations face growing challenges as increasing systems and phenomena complexity requires higher accuracy, driving up computational demands. Quantum many-body GW methods are state-of-the-art for treating electronic excited states and couplings but often hindered due to the costly numerical complexity. Here, we present innovative implementations of advanced GW methods within the BerkeleyGW package, enabling large-scale simulations on Frontier and Aurora exascale platforms. Our approach demonstrates exceptional versatility for complex heterogeneous systems with up to 17,574 atoms, along with achieving true performance portability across GPU architectures. We demonstrate excellent strong and weak scaling to thousands of nodes, reaching double-precision core-kernel performance of 1.069 ExaFLOP/s on Frontier (9,408 nodes) and 707.52 PetaFLOP/s on Aurora (9,600 nodes), corresponding to 59.45% and 48.79% of peak, respectively. Our work demonstrates a breakthrough in utilizing exascale computing for quantum materials simulations, delivering unprecedented predictive capabilities for rational designs of future quantum technologies.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2025

A Closeness Centrality-based Circuit Partitioner for Quantum Simulations

Simulating quantum circuits (QC) on high-performance computing (HPC) systems has become an essential method to benchmark algorithms and probe the potential of large-scale quantum computation despite the limitations of current quantum hardware. However, these simulations often require large amounts of resources, necessitating the use of large clusters with thousands of compute nodes and large memory footprints. In this work, we introduce an end-to-end framework that provides an efficient partitioning scheme for large-scale QCs alongside a flexible code generator to offer a portable solution that minimizes data movement between compute nodes. By formulating the distribution of quantum states and circuits as a graph problem, we apply closeness centrality to assess gate importance and design a fast, scalable partitioning method. The resulting partitions are compiled into highly optimized codes that run seamlessly on a wide range of supercomputers, providing critical insights into the performance and scalability of quantum algorithm simulations.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Moiré excitons in generalized Wigner crystals

Moiré superlattices of transition-metal dichalcogenide bilayers host strong Coulomb interactions residing in narrow electron bands, leading to correlated insulating states at fractional carrier doping densities, known as generalized Wigner crystals. In excited states, the formation of moiré excitons is expected to be fundamentally shaped by the Wigner-crystal ground states, manifesting an intricate interplay between electronic and excitonic correlations. However, the microscopic description of these Wigner crystalline excitons (WCEs) remains elusive, largely subject to speculations, and is further needed for the understanding of exotic excitonic phases (e.g., exciton insulators and exciton density waves) and their unique properties (e.g., anomalous exciton diffusion). Here, using first-principles many-body GW-Bethe-Salpeter-equation calculations, we directly reveal the internal structures of WCEs in angle-aligned MoSe2/MoS2 moiré heterostructure at hole fillings of 1/3 and 2/3. Our results unveil the propagation of correlation effects from the ground state to excited states, shaping the real-space characteristics of WCEs. The strong two-particle excitonic correlations dominate over the kinetic energy of free electron-hole pairs, in analog to the strong single-particle correlations of flat bands. We propose that such unusual excited-state correlation effects of WCEs can be experimentally probed by photocurrent tunneling microscopy. Our work provides a microscopic understanding of strongly correlated WCEs, suggesting them as a highly tunable mixed boson-fermion platform to study many-body interactions and phenomena.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2025

GPU acceleration of non-equilibrium Green's function calculation using OpenACC and CUDA FORTRAN

The numerical solution of the Kadanoff-Baym nonlinear integro-differential equations, which yields the non-equilibrium Green's functions (NEGFs) of quantum many-body systems, poses significant computational challenges due to its high computational complexity. In this work, we present efficient implementations of a numerical method for solving these equations on distributed-memory architectures, including many-core CPUs and multi-GPU systems. For CPU-based platforms, we adopt a hybrid MPI/OpenMP programming model to exploit both inter-node and intra-node parallelism. On GPU-accelerated systems, we implement the method using two distinct approaches: MPI/OpenACC and MPI/CUDA FORTRAN. Several optimization strategies are employed to enhance GPU performance, including techniques to maximize computational resource utilization and minimize the overhead associated with kernel launches and memory management. Although OpenACC is easy to use, CUDA FORTRAN provides more advanced features for configuring and managing multiple levels of concurrency, while also simplifying memory allocation and data movement between host and device. This flexibility translates into significant performance improvements. We compare the performance of the three implementations and demonstrate that the GPU-based approaches achieve substantial speedups over CPU-based implementations. Furthermore, both CPU and GPU versions exhibit excellent strong and weak scaling, confirming the scalability and efficiency of our approach for large-scale NEGF computations.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2025

Ab-initio density-matrix approach to exciton coherence: phonon scattering, Coulomb interactions and radiative recombination

Relaxation processes following light excitation in semiconductors are key in materials-based quantum technology applications. These processes are broadly studied in atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), quasi-two-dimensional excitonic semiconductors in which atomistic design allows for tunable excited-state properties, such as relaxation lifetimes and photo-induced coherence. In this work, we present a density-matrix-based approach to compute exciton relaxation within a many-body ab initio perspective. We expand our previously developed Lindblad density-matrix formalism to capture multi-channel electron-hole pair relaxation processes, including phonon and Coulomb scattering as well as radiative recombination, and study their effect on the time-resolved excited-state propagation. Using monolayer MoSe$_2$ as a prototypical example, we examine many-body effects on the time-dependent dynamics of photoactive excitations, exploring how the electron-hole pair interactions are reflected in variations of the excitation energy, spectral signature, and state coherence. Our method supplies a detailed understanding of exciton relaxation mechanisms in realistic materials, offering a previously unexplored pathway to study excited-state dynamics in semiconductors from first principles.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2024

Diverse Manifestations of Electron-Phonon Coupling in a Kagome Superconductor

Recent angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) experiments on a kagome metal CsV$_3$Sb$_5$ revealed distinct multimodal dispersion kinks and nodeless superconducting gaps across multiple electron bands. The prominent photoemission kinks suggest a definitive coupling between electrons and certain collective modes, yet the precise nature of this interaction and its connection to superconductivity remain to be established. Here, employing the state-of-the-art \textit{ab initio} many-body perturbation theory computation, we present direct evidence that electron-phonon ($e$-ph) coupling induces the multimodal photoemission kinks in CsV$_3$Sb$_5$, and profoundly, drives the nodeless $s$-wave superconductivity, showcasing the diverse manifestations of the $e$-ph coupling. Our calculations well capture the experimentally measured kinks and their fine structures, and reveal that vibrations from different atomic species dictate the multimodal behavior. Results from anisotropic $GW$-Eliashberg equations predict a phonon-mediated superconductivity with nodeless $s$-wave gaps, in excellent agreement with various ARPES and scanning tunneling spectroscopy measurements. Despite of the universal origin from the $e$-ph coupling, the contributions of several characteristic phonon vibrations vary in different phenomena, highlighting a versatile role of $e$-ph coupling in shaping the low-energy excitations of kagome metals.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2024

BEAST DB: Grand-Canonical Database of Electrocatalyst Properties

We present BEAST DB, an open-source database comprised of ab initio electrochemical data computed using grand-canonical density functional theory in implicit solvent at consistent calculation parameters. The database contains over 20,000 surface calculations and covers a broad set of heterogeneous catalyst materials and electrochemical reactions. Calculations were performed at self-consistent fixed potential as well as constant charge to facilitate comparisons to the computational hydrogen electrode. This article presents common use cases of the database to rationalize trends in catalyst activity, screen catalyst material spaces, understand elementary mechanistic steps, analyze electronic structure, and train machine learning models to predict higher fidelity properties. Users can interact graphically with the database by querying for individual calculations to gain granular understanding of reaction steps or by querying for an entire reaction pathway on a given material using an interactive reaction pathway tool. BEAST DB will be periodically updated, with planned future updates to include advanced electronic structure data, surface speciation studies, and greater reaction coverage.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2024

Static Subspace Approximation for Random Phase Approximation Correlation Energies: Implementation and Performance

Developing theoretical understanding of complex reactions and processes at interfaces requires using methods that go beyond semilocal density functional theory to accurately describe the interactions between solvent, reactants and substrates. Methods based on many-body perturbation theory, such as the random phase approximation (RPA), have previously been limited due to their computational complexity. However, this is now a surmountable barrier due to the advances in computational power available, in particular through modern GPU-based supercomputers. In this work, we describe the implementation of RPA calculations within BerkeleyGW and show its favorable computational performance on large complex systems relevant for catalysis and electrochemistry applications. Our implementation builds off of the static subspace approximation which, by employing a compressed representation of the frequency dependent polarizability, enables the evaluation of the RPA correlation energy with significant acceleration and systematically controllable accuracy. We find that the computational cost of calculating the RPA correlation energy scales only linearly with system size for systems containing up to 50 thousand bands, and is expected to scale quadratically thereafter. We also show excellent strong scaling results across several supercomputers, demonstrating the performance and portability of this implementation.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2024

Velocity-gauge real-time time-dependent density functional tight-binding for large-scale condensed matter systems

We present a new velocity-gauge real-time, time-dependent density functional tight-binding (VG-rtTDDFTB) implementation in the open-source DFTB+ software package (https://dftbplus.org) for probing electronic excitations in large, condensed matter systems. Our VG-rtTDDFTB approach enables real-time electron dynamics simulations of large, periodic, condensed matter systems containing thousands of atoms with a favorable computational scaling as a function of system size. We provide computational details and benchmark calculations to demonstrate its accuracy and computational parallelizability on a variety of large material systems. As a representative example, we calculate laser-induced electron dynamics in a 512-atom amorphous silicon supercell to highlight the large periodic systems that can be examined with our implementation. Taken together, our VG-rtTDDFTB approach enables new electron dynamics simulations of complex systems that require large periodic supercells, such as crystal defects, complex surfaces, nanowires, and amorphous materials.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2024

Cost-Effective Methodology for Complex Tuning Searches in HPC: Navigating Interdependencies and Dimensionality

Tuning searches are pivotal in High-Performance Computing (HPC), addressing complex optimization challenges in computational applications. The complexity arises not only from finely tuning parameters within routines but also potential interdependencies among them, rendering traditional optimization methods inefficient. Instead of scrutinizing interdependencies among parameters and routines, practitioners often face the dilemma of conducting independent tuning searches for each routine, thereby overlooking interdependence, or pursuing a more resource-intensive joint search for all routines. This decision is driven by the consideration that some interdependence analysis and high-dimensional decomposition techniques in literature may be prohibitively expensive in HPC tuning searches. Our methodology adapts and refines these methods to ensure computational feasibility while maximizing performance gains in real-world scenarios. Our methodology leverages a cost-effective interdependence analysis to decide whether to merge several tuning searches into a joint search or conduct orthogonal searches. Tested on synthetic functions with varying levels of parameter interdependence, our methodology efficiently explores the search space. In comparison to Bayesian-optimization-based full independent or fully joint searches, our methodology suggested an optimized breakdown of independent and merged searches that led to final configurations up to 8% more accurate, reducing the search time by up to 95%. When applied to GPU-offloaded Real-Time Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory (RT-TDDFT), an application in computational materials science that challenges modern HPC autotuners, our methodology achieved an effective tuning search. Its adaptability and efficiency extend beyond RT-TDDFT, making it valuable for related applications in HPC.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2020

CP2K: An Electronic Structure and Molecular Dynamics Software Package -- Quickstep: Efficient and Accurate Electronic Structure Calculations

CP2K is an open source electronic structure and molecular dynamics software package to perform atomistic simulations of solid-state, liquid, molecular and biological systems. It is especially aimed at massively-parallel and linear-scaling electronic structure methods and state-of-the-art ab-initio molecular dynamics simulations. Excellent performance for electronic structure calculations is achieved using novel algorithms implemented for modern high-performance computing systems. This review revisits the main capabilities of CP2k to perform efficient and accurate electronic structure simulations. The emphasis is put on density functional theory and multiple post-Hartree-Fock methods using the Gaussian and plane wave approach and its augmented all-electron extension.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2019

Reproducibility in $G_0W_0$ Calculations for Solids

Ab initio many-body perturbation theory within the $GW$ approximation is a Green's function formalism widely used in the calculation of quasiparticle excitation energies of solids. In what has become an increasingly standard approach, Kohn-Sham eigenenergies, generated from a DFT calculation with a strategically-chosen exchange correlation functional ``starting point'', are used to construct $G$ and $W$, and then perturbatively corrected by the resultant $GW$ self-energy. In practice, there are several ways to construct the $GW$ self-energy, and these can lead to variations in predicted quasiparticle energies. For example, for ZnO and TiO$_2$, reported $GW$ fundamental gaps can vary by more than 1 eV. In this work, we address the convergence and key approximations in contemporary $G_0W_0$ calculations, including frequency-integration schemes and the treatment of the Coulomb divergence in the exact-exchange term. We study several systems,and compare three different $GW$ codes: BerkeleyGW, Abinit and Yambo. We demonstrate, for the first time, that the same quasiparticle energies for systems in the condensed phase can be obtained with different codes, and we provide a comprehensive assessment of implementations of the $GW$ approximation.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗