arXiv subjects

Paul R. C. Kent

Publications and source records attributed to Paul R. C. Kent.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Diffusion Quantum Monte Carlo Benchmark of Interlayer Binding and Charge Redistribution in Chemically Distinct Two-Dimensional Van Der Waals Bilayers

Interlayer interactions in two-dimensional materials can generate emergent phenomena absent in their constituent monolayers, including unconventional magnetic order, multiferroicity, and topological magnetic phases. Predicting such emergent behavior requires simultaneously resolving long-range dispersion, short-range orbital hybridization, and electronic correlation interactions that are intrinsically nonlocal and many-body and remain challenging even for advanced density-functional approximations. Here we establish a systematically controlled many-body benchmark for diverse bilayer materials using diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC), spanning single-sheet materials, transition-metal dichalcogenides, and magnetic transition-metal halides. We obtain equilibrium separations, binding energetics, interlayer vibrational modes, and charge redistribution, finding excellent agreement with available experiments while revealing systematic and property-dependent failures across widely used semilocal, meta-GGA, and dispersion-corrected density functionals. Beyond energetics, DMC resolves subtle interlayer charge rearrangements, particularly leading to long-ranged dipolar tails in magnetic Cr trihalides that survive well beyond the regime where semilocal DFT predicts appreciable interlayer polarization, providing a many-body basis for understanding interlayer-coupled ferroic and magnetic phenomena. The resulting energies, response properties, and high-accuracy electron densities constitute a transferable benchmark for developing next-generation density functionals. Finally, we provide a scalable high-performance-computing workflow that enables systematic expansion of many-body benchmark datasets across emerging families of layered quantum materials by the scientific community.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2026

Many-Body Destabilization of Intermediate Oxygen-Hole States

Oxygen holes in transition-metal oxides can appear as localized polarons, symmetry-delocalized ligand holes, or intermediate states whose stability is controlled by subtle electron-correlation effects. In layered Na$_{2-x}$Mn$_3$O$_7$, hybrid density functional theory (DFT) predicts an unusual bond-centered split oxygen-hole polaron stabilized near ordered Mn vacancies. Here we resolve the nature of this state using diffusion Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC). Although hybrid DFT favors the split configuration, QMC reverses the energetic ordering and identifies the localized oxygen polaron as the lower-energy state. The result is robust to the class of trial wavefunctions used, including hybrid and generalized-gradient DFT wavefunctions. Many-body spin densities further show that the nominal split state partially collapses toward a localized polaron. Because localized and split configurations produce similar O K-edge spectral features, this qualitative failure is not resolved by conventional X-ray absorption signatures alone. These findings identify Na$_{2-x}$Mn$_3$O$_7$ as a stringent benchmark for oxygen-hole polarons and reveal a failure mode of hybrid functionals in correlated oxides.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2025

Characterizing GPU Energy Usage in Exascale-Ready Portable Science Applications

We characterize the GPU energy usage of two widely adopted exascale-ready applications representing two classes of particle and mesh solvers: (i) QMCPACK, a quantum Monte Carlo package, and (ii) AMReXCastro, an adaptive mesh astrophysical code. We analyze power, temperature, utilization, and energy traces from double-/single (mixed)-precision benchmarks on NVIDIA's A100 and H100 and AMD's MI250X GPUs using queries in NVML and rocm_smi_lib, respectively. We explore application-specific metrics to provide insights on energy vs. performance trade-offs. Our results suggest that mixed-precision energy savings range between 6-25% on QMCPACK and 45% on AMReX-Castro. Also, we found gaps in the AMD tooling used on Frontier GPUs that need to be understood, while query resolutions on NVML have little variability between 1 ms-1 s. Overall, application level knowledge is crucial to define energy-cost/science-benefit opportunities for the codesign of future supercomputer architectures in the post-Moore era.

cs.PF↗

arXiv2025

Reproducibility of fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo across diverse community codes: The case of water-methane dimer

Fixed-node diffusion quantum Monte Carlo (FN-DMC) is a widely-trusted many-body method for solving the Schrödinger equation, known for its reliable predictions of material and molecular properties. Furthermore, its excellent scalability with system complexity and near-perfect utilization of computational power makes FN-DMC ideally positioned to leverage new advances in computing to address increasingly complex scientific problems. Even though the method is widely used as a computational gold standard, reproducibility across the numerous FN-DMC code implementations has yet to be demonstrated. This difficulty stems from the diverse array of DMC algorithms and trial wave functions, compounded by the method's inherent stochastic nature. This study represents a community-wide effort to assess the reproducibility of the method, affirming that: Yes, FN-DMC is reproducible (when handled with care). Using the water-methane dimer as the canonical test case, we compare results from eleven different FN-DMC codes and show that the approximations to treat the non-locality of pseudopotentials are the primary source of the discrepancies between them. In particular, we demonstrate that, for the same choice of determinantal component in the trial wave function, reliable and reproducible predictions can be achieved by employing the T-move (TM), the determinant locality approximation (DLA), or the determinant T-move (DTM) schemes, while the older locality approximation (LA) leads to considerable variability in results. These findings demonstrate that, with appropriate choices of algorithmic details, fixed-node DMC is reproducible across diverse community codes-highlighting the maturity and robustness of the method as a tool for open and reliable computational science.

physics.comp-ph↗

arXiv2025

Toward improved property prediction of 2D materials using many-body quantum Monte Carlo methods

The field of two-dimensional (2D) materials has grown dramatically in the last two decades. 2D materials can be utilized for a variety of next-generation optoelectronic, spintronic, clean energy, and quantum computation applications. These 2D structures, which are often exfoliated from layered van der Waals (vdW) materials, possess highly inhomogeneous electron densities and can possess short- and long-range electron correlations. The complexities of 2D materials make them challenging to study with standard mean-field electronic structure methods such as density functional theory (DFT), which relies on approximations for the unknown exchange-correlation functional. In order to overcome the limitations of DFT, highly accurate many-body electronic structure approaches such as Diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) can be utilized. In the past decade, DMC has been used to calculate accurate magnetic, electronic, excitonic, and topological properties in addition to accurately capturing interlayer interactions and cohesion and adsorption energetics of 2D materials. This approach has been applied to 2D systems of wide interest including graphene, phosphorene, MoS$_2$, CrI$_3$, VSe$_2$, GaSe, GeSe, borophene, and several others. In this review article, we highlight some successful recent applications of DMC to 2D systems for improved property predictions beyond standard DFT.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2025

A Panoramic View of MXenes via a New Design Strategy

Two-dimensional (2D) transition metal carbides and nitrides, known as MXenes, possess unique physical and chemical properties, enabling diverse applications in fields ranging from energy storage to communication, catalysis, sensing, healthcare, and beyond. The transition metal and nonmetallic atoms in MXenes can exhibit distinct coordination environments, potentially leading to a wide variety of 2D phases. Despite extensive research and significant advancements, a fundamental understanding of MXenes' phase diversity and its relationship with their hierarchical precursors, including intermediate MAX phases and parent bulk phases, remains limited. Using high-throughput modeling based on first-principles density functional theory, we unveil a wide range of MXenes and comprehensively evaluate their relative stabilities across a large chemical space. The key lies in considering both octahedral and trigonal prismatic coordination environments characteristic of various bulk phases. Through this comprehensive structural library of MXenes, we uncover a close alignment between the phase stability of MXenes and that of their hierarchical 3D counterparts. Building on this, we demonstrate a new design strategy where the atomic coordination environments in parent bulk phases can serve as reliable predictors for the design of MXenes, reducing reliance on intermediate MAX phases. Our study significantly expands the landscape of MXenes, at least doubling the number of possible structures.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2024

JARVIS-Leaderboard: A Large Scale Benchmark of Materials Design Methods

Lack of rigorous reproducibility and validation are major hurdles for scientific development across many fields. Materials science in particular encompasses a variety of experimental and theoretical approaches that require careful benchmarking. Leaderboard efforts have been developed previously to mitigate these issues. However, a comprehensive comparison and benchmarking on an integrated platform with multiple data modalities with both perfect and defect materials data is still lacking. This work introduces JARVIS-Leaderboard, an open-source and community-driven platform that facilitates benchmarking and enhances reproducibility. The platform allows users to set up benchmarks with custom tasks and enables contributions in the form of dataset, code, and meta-data submissions. We cover the following materials design categories: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Electronic Structure (ES), Force-fields (FF), Quantum Computation (QC) and Experiments (EXP). For AI, we cover several types of input data, including atomic structures, atomistic images, spectra, and text. For ES, we consider multiple ES approaches, software packages, pseudopotentials, materials, and properties, comparing results to experiment. For FF, we compare multiple approaches for material property predictions. For QC, we benchmark Hamiltonian simulations using various quantum algorithms and circuits. Finally, for experiments, we use the inter-laboratory approach to establish benchmarks. There are 1281 contributions to 274 benchmarks using 152 methods with more than 8 million data-points, and the leaderboard is continuously expanding. The JARVIS-Leaderboard is available at the website: https://pages.nist.gov/jarvis_leaderboard

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2024

Force-free identification of minimum-energy pathways and transition states for stochastic electronic structure theories

Stochastic electronic structure theories, e.g., Quantum Monte Carlo methods, enable highly accurate total energy calculations which in principle can be used to construct highly accurate potential energy surfaces. However, their stochastic nature poses a challenge to the computation and use of forces and Hessians, which are typically required in algorithms for minimum-energy pathway (MEP) and transition state (TS) identification, such as the nudged-elastic band (NEB) algorithm and its climbing image formulation. Here, we present strategies that utilize the surrogate Hessian line-search method - previously developed for QMC structural optimization - to efficiently identify MEP and TS structures without requiring force calculations at the level of the stochastic electronic structure theory. By modifying the surrogate Hessian algorithm to operate in path-orthogonal subspaces and on saddle points, we show that it is possible to identify MEPs and TSs using a force-free QMC approach. We demonstrate these strategies via two examples, the inversion of the ammonia molecule and an SN2 reaction. We validate our results using Density Functional Theory- and coupled cluster-based NEB calculations. We then introduce a hybrid DFT-QMC approach to compute thermodynamic and kinetic quantities - free energy differences, rate constants, and equilibrium constants - that incorporates stochastically-optimized structures and their energies, and show that this scheme improves upon DFT accuracy. Our methods generalize straightforwardly to other systems and other high-accuracy theories that similarly face challenges computing energy gradients, paving the way for highly accurate PES mapping, transition state determination, and thermodynamic and kinetic calculations, at significantly reduced computational expense.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2023

DFT+U and Quantum Monte Carlo study of electronic and optical properties of AgNiO$_2$ and AgNi$_{1-x}$Co$_{x}$O$_2$ delafossite

As the only semimetallic $d^{10}$-based delafossite, AgNiO$_2$ has received a great deal of attention due to both its unique semimetallicity and its antiferromagnetism in the NiO$_2$ layer that is coupled with a lattice distortion. In contrast, other delafossites such as AgCoO$_2$ are insulating. Here we study how the electronic structure of AgNi$_{1-x}$Co$_{x}$O$_2$ alloys vary with Ni/Co concentration, in order to investigate the electronic properties and phase stability of the intermetallics. While the electronic and magnetic structure of delafossites have been studied using Density Functional Theory (DFT), earlier studies have not included corrections for strong on-site Coulomb interactions. In order to treat these interactions accurately, in this study we use Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) simulations to obtain accurate estimates for the electronic and magnetic properties of AgNiO$_2$. By comparison to DFT results we show that these electron correlations are critical to account for. We show that Co doping on the magnetic Ni sites results in a metal-insulator transition near $x\sim 0.33$, and reentrant behavior near $x\sim 0.66$

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2023

Software engineering to sustain a high-performance computing scientific application: QMCPACK

We provide an overview of the software engineering efforts and their impact in QMCPACK, a production-level ab-initio Quantum Monte Carlo open-source code targeting high-performance computing (HPC) systems. Aspects included are: (i) strategic expansion of continuous integration (CI) targeting CPUs, using GitHub Actions runners, and NVIDIA and AMD GPUs in pre-exascale systems, using self-hosted hardware; (ii) incremental reduction of memory leaks using sanitizers, (iii) incorporation of Docker containers for CI and reproducibility, and (iv) refactoring efforts to improve maintainability, testing coverage, and memory lifetime management. We quantify the value of these improvements by providing metrics to illustrate the shift towards a predictive, rather than reactive, sustainable maintenance approach. Our goal, in documenting the impact of these efforts on QMCPACK, is to contribute to the body of knowledge on the importance of research software engineering (RSE) for the sustainability of community HPC codes and scientific discovery at scale.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2022

Origin of Metal-Insulator Transitions in Correlated Perovskite Metals

The mechanisms that drive metal-to-insulator transitions (MIT) in correlated solids are not fully understood. For example, the perovskite (PV) SrCoO3 is a FM metal while the oxygen-deficient (n-doped) brownmillerite (BM) SrCoO2.5 is an anti-ferromagnetic (AFM) insulator. Given the magnetic and structural transitions that accompany the MIT, the driver for such a MIT transition is unclear. We also observe that the perovskite metals LaNiO3, SrFeO3, and SrCoO3 also undergo MIT when n-doped via high-to-low valence compositional changes. Also, pressurizing the insulating BM SrCoO2.5 phase, drives a gap closing. Using DFT and correlated diffusion Monte Carlo approaches we demonstrate that the ABO3 perovskites most prone to MIT are self hole-doped materials, reminiscent of a negative charge-transfer system. Upon n-doping away from the negative-charge transfer metallic phase, an underlying charge-lattice (or e-phonon) coupling drives the system to a bond-disproportionated gapped state, thereby achieving ligand hole passivation at certain sites only, leading to charge-disproportionated states. The size of the gap opened is correlated with the size of the hole-filling at these ligand sites. This suggests that the interactions driving the gap opening to realize a MIT even in correlated metals is the charge-transfer energy, but it couples with the underlying phonons to enable the transition to the insulating phase. Other orderings (magnetic, charge, etc.) driven by weaker interactions are secondary and may assist gap openings at small dopings, but its the charge-transfer energy that predominantly determines the bandgap, with a negative energy preferring the metallic phase. This n-doping can be achieved by modulations in stoichiometry or composition or pressure. Hence, controlling the amount of the ligand-hole is key in controlling MIT. We compare our predictions to experiments where possible.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2021

Interfacial charge transfer and interaction in the MXene/TiO2 heterostructures

Hybrid materials of MXenes (2D carbides and nitrides) and transition-metal oxides (TMOs) have shown great promise in electrical energy storage and 2D heterostructures have been proposed as the next-generation electrode materials to expand the limits of current technology. Here we use first principles density functional theory to investigate the interfacial structure, energetics, and electronic properties of the heterostructures of MXenes (Tin+1CnT2; T=terminal groups) and anatase TiO2. We find that the greatest work-function differences are between OH-terminated-MXene (1.6 eV) and anatase TiO2(101) (6.4 eV), resulting in the largest interfacial electron transfer (~0.9 e/nm2 across the interface) from MXene to the TiO2 layer. This interface also has the strongest adhesion and further strengthened by hydrogen bond formation. For O-, F-, or mixed O-/F- terminated Tin+1Cn MXenes, electron transfer is minimal and interfacial adhesion is weak for their heterostructures with TiO2. The strong dependence of the interfacial properties of the MXene/TiO2 heterostructures on the surface chemistry of the MXenes will be useful to tune the heterostructures for electric-energy-storage applications.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2020

Towards a Systematic Improvement of the Fixed-Node Approximation in Diffusion Monte Carlo for Solids -- A Case Study In Diamond

While Diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) is in principle an exact stochastic method for \textit{ab initio} electronic structure calculations, in practice the fermionic sign problem necessitates the use of the fixed-node approximation and trial wavefunctions with approximate nodes (or zeros) must be used. This approximation introduces a variational error in the energy that potentially can be tested and systematically improved. Here, we present a computational method that produces trial wavefunctions with systematically improvable nodes for DMC calculations of periodic solids. These trial wavefunctions are efficiently generated with the configuration interaction using a perturbative selection made iteratively (CIPSI) method. A simple protocol in which both exact and approximate results for finite supercells are used to extrapolate to the thermodynamic limit is introduced.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2020

Doped NiO: the Mottness of a charge transfer insulator

The evolution of the electronic structures of strongly correlated insulators with doping has long been a central fundamental question in condensed matter physics; it is also of great practical relevance for applications. We have studied the evolution of NiO under hole {\em and} electron doping using high-quality thin film and a wide range of experimental and theoretical methods. The evolution is in both cases very smooth with dopant concentration. The band gap is asymmetric under electron and hole doping, consistent with a charge-transfer insulator picture, and is reduced faster under hole than electron doping. For both electron and hole doping, occupied states are introduced at the top of the valence band. The formation of deep donor levels under electron doping and the inability to pin otherwise empty states near the conduction band edge is indicative that local electron addition and removal energies are dominated by a Mott-like Hubbard $U$-interaction even though the global bandgap is predominantly a charge-transfer type gap.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2019

Interfacial and Electronic Properties of Heterostructures of MXene and Graphene

MXene-based heterostructures have received considerable interest owing to their unique properties. Herein, we examine various heterostructures of a prototypical MXene and graphene using density functional theory. We find that the adhesion energy, charge transfer, and band structure of these heterostructures are sensitive not only to the surface functional group, but also to the stacking order. Difference in work function dictates the direction and amount of electron transfer across the interface, which causes a shift in the Dirac point of the graphene bands in the heterostructures of monolayer graphene and monolayer MXene. In the heterostructures of bilayer graphene and monolayer MXene, the interface breaks the symmetry of the bilayer graphene; in the case of the AB-stacking bilayer, the electron transfer leads to an interfacial electric field that opens up a gap in the graphene bands at the K point. This internal polarization strengthens both the interfacial adhesions and the cohesion between the two graphene layers. The MXene-graphene-MXene and graphene-MXene-graphene sandwich structures behave as two mirror-symmetric MXene-graphene interfaces. Our first principles studies provide a comprehensive understanding for the interaction between a typical MXene and graphene.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2018

Doping a Bad Metal: Origin of Suppression of Metal-Insulator Transition in Non-Stoichiometric VO$_2$

Rutile ($R$) phase VO$_2$ is a quintessential example of a strongly correlated bad-metal, which undergoes a metal-insulator transition (MIT) concomitant with a structural transition to a V-V dimerized monoclinic phase below T$_{MIT} \sim 340K$. It has been experimentally shown that one can control this transition by doping VO$_2$. In particular, doping with oxygen vacancies ($V_O$) has been shown to completely suppress this MIT {\em without} any structural transition. We explain this suppression by elucidating the influence of oxygen-vacancies on the electronic-structure of the metallic $R$ phase VO$_2$, explicitly treating strong electron-electron correlations using dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) as well as diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) flavor of quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) techniques. We show that $V_O$'s tend to change the V-3$d$ filling away from its nominal half-filled value, with the $e_{g}^π$ orbitals competing with the otherwise dominant $a_{1g}$ orbital. Loss of this near orbital polarization of the $a_{1g}$ orbital is associated with a weakening of electron correlations, especially along the V-V dimerization direction. This removes a charge-density wave (CDW) instability along this direction above a critical doping concentration, which further suppresses the metal-insulator transition. Our study also suggests that the MIT is predominantly driven by a correlation-induced CDW instability along the V-V dimerization direction.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2018

Anomalous dielectric response at intermixed oxide heterointerfaces

Two-dimensional charge carrier accumulation at oxide heterointerfaces presents a paradigm shift for oxide electronics. Like a capacitor, interfacial charge buildup couples to an electric field across the dielectric medium. To prevent the so-called polar catastrophe, several charge screening mechanisms emerge, including polar distortions and interfacial intermixing which reduce the sharpness of the interface. Here, we examine how atomic intermixing at oxide interfaces affect the balance between polar distortions and electric potential across the dielectric medium. We find that intermixing moves the peak charge distribution away from the oxide/oxide interface; thereby changing the direction of polar distortions away from this boundary with minimal effect on the electric field. This opposing electric field and polar distortions is equivalent to the transient phase transition tipping point observed in double well ferroelectrics; resulting in an anomalous dielectric response -- a possible signature of local negative differential capacitance, with implications for designing dissipationless oxide electronics.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2018

Oxygen vacancy formation energies in PbTiO$_3$/SrTiO$_3$ superlattice

The defect stability in a prototypical perovskite oxide superlattice consisting of SrTiO$_3$ and PbTiO$_3$ (STO/PTO) is determined using first principles density functional theory calculations. Specifically, the oxygen vacancy formation energies E$_v$ in the paraelectric and ferroelectric phases of a superlattice with four atomic layers of STO and four layers of PTO (4STO/4PTO) are determined and compared. The effects of charge state, octahedral rotation, polarization, and interfaces on the E$_v$ are examined. The formation energies vary layer-by-layer in the superlattices, with E$_v$ being higher in the ferroelectric phase than that in the paraelectric phase. The two interfaces constructed in these oxide superlattices, which are symmetrically equivalent in the paraelectric systems, exhibit very different formation energies in the ferroelectric superlattices and this can be seen to be driven by the coupling of ferroelectric and rotational modes. At equivalent lattice sites, E$_v$ of charged vacancies is generally lower than that of neutral vacancies. Octahedral rotations (a$^0$a$^0$c$^-$) in the FE superlattice have a significant effect on the E$_v$, increasing the formation energy of vacancies located near the interface but decreasing the formation energy of the oxygen vacancies located in the bulk-like regions of the STO and PTO constituent parts. The formation energy variations among different layers are found to be primarily caused by the difference in the local relaxation at each layer. These fundamental insights into the defect stability in perovskite superlattices can be used to tune defect properties via controlling the constituent materials of superlattices and interface engineering.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗