Electronic structure methods Kohn-Sham equations

For direct Af-electron variational methods, the computational effort increases so rapidly with increasing N that alternative simplified methods must be used for calculations of the electronic structure of large molecules and solids. Especially for calculations of the electronic energy levels of solids (energy-band structure), the methodology of choice is that of independent-electron models, usually in the framework of density functional theory [189, 321, 90], When restricted to local potentials, as in the local-density approximation (LDA), this is a valid variational theory for any A-electron system. It can readily be applied to heavy atoms by relativistic or semirelativistic modification of the kinetic energy operator in the orbital Kohn-Sham equations [229, 384],... 

The main challenge, after having defined the Kohn-Sham equations, is to solve them in an accurate way where the main problem is to find an accurate description of the multi-centre Coulomb potential. The method used is, to a large extent, determined by the character of the atoms involved in the bonding. The electronic structure of alkali and noble metals is for example rather simple... 

C. Density functional theory Density functional theory (DFT) is the third alternative quantum mechanics method for obtaining chemical structures and their associated energies.Unlike the other two approaches, however, DFT avoids working with the many-electron wavefunction. DFT focuses on the direct use of electron densities P(r), which are included in the fundamental mathematical formulations, the Kohn-Sham equations, which define the basis for this method. Unlike Hartree-Fock methods of ab initio theory, DFT explicitly takes electron correlation into account. This means that DFT should give results comparable to the standard ab initio correlation models, such as second order M(j)ller-Plesset (MP2) theory. 

The purpose of this chapter will be to review the fundamentals of ab initio MD. We will consider here Density Functional Theory based ab initio MD, in particular in its Car-Parrinello version. We will start by introducing the basics of Density Functional Theory and the Kohn-Sham method, as the method chosen to perform electronic structure calculation. This will be followed by a rapid discussion on plane wave basis sets to solve the Kohn-Sham equations, including pseudopotentials for the core electrons. Then we will discuss the critical point of ab initio MD, i.e. coupling the electronic structure calculation to the ionic dynamics, using either the Born-Oppenheimer or the Car-Parrinello schemes. Finally, we will extend this presentation to the calculation of some electronic properties, in particular polarization through the modern theory of polarization in periodic systems. 

Once the Kohn-Sham equations have been solved, we are in a position to evaluate energies, forces and the electronic structure of a material itself. In particular, with the eigenvalues e, and corresponding wave functions i/f, (r) we can compute the energy of the system explicitly. As can be seen from the discussion given above, and as has been true with each of the total energy methods introduced in this chapter, in the end we are left with a scheme such that once the nuclear... 

All of the electronic structure methods described above make use of basis sets. This is because the corresponding HF, Cl, or Kohn-Sham equations cannot be solved analytically. The solution to this problem was first given by Roothaan80 who suggested expanding the orbitals in terms of a known... 

The calculation of the ground-state geometry and electronic structure proceeds by an interlaced iteration of the Kohn-Sham equations and the ionic stationary conditions. The Kohn-Sham equations were solved by a damped gradient iteration method and the ionic configuration was iterated with a simulated annealing technique, using a Metropolis algorithm. 

Abstract We summarize an ab-initio real-space approach to electronic structure calculations based on the finite-element method. This approach brings a new quality to solving Kohn Sham equations, calculating electronic states, total energy, Hellmann-Feynman forces and material properties particularly for non-crystalline, non-periodic structures. Precise, fully non-local, environment-reflecting real-space ab-initio pseudopotentials increase the efficiency by treating the core-electrons separately, without imposing any kind of frozen-core approximation. Contrary to the variety of well established k-space methods that are based on Bloch s theorem... 

The present method focuses on solving Kohn Sham equations and calculating electronic states, total energy and material properties of non-crystalline, nonperiodic structures. Contrary to the variety of well established k-space methods that are based on Bloch s theorem and applicable to periodic structures, we don t assume periodicity in any respect. Precise ab-initio environment-reflecting pseudopotentials proven within the plane wave approach are connected with real space finite-element basis in the present approach. The main expected asset of the present approach is the combination of efficiency and high precision of ab-initio pseudopotentials with universal applicability, universal basis and excellent convergence control of finite-element method not restricted to periodic environment. 

We introduced a method to solve Kohn Sham equations and to calculate electronic states and other properties of non-crystalline, non-periodic structures with fully non-local real-space environment-reflecting ab-initio pseudopotentials using finite elements, together with some preliminary results of our program. We believe this... 

A number of different methods have been proposed to introduce a self-interaction correction into the Kohn-Sham formalism (Perdew and Zunger 1981 KUmmel and Perdew 2003 Grafenstein, Kraka, and Cremer 2004). This correction is particularly useful in situations with odd numbers of electrons distributed over more than one atom, e.g., in transition-state structures (Patchkovskii and Ziegler 2002). Unfortunately, the correction introduces an additional level of self-consistency into the KS SCF process because it depends on the KS orbitals, and it tends to be difficult and time-consuming to converge the relevant equations. However, future developments in non-local correlation functionals may be able to correct for self-interaction error in a more efficient manner. 

The combination of the Dirac-Kohn-Sham scheme with non-relativis-tic exchange-correlation functionals is sometimes termed the Dirac-Slater approach, since the first implementations for atoms [13] and molecules [14] used the Xa exchange functional. Because of the four-component (Dirac) structure, such methods are sometimes called fully relativistic although the electron interaction is treated without any relativistic corrections, and almost no results of relativistic density functional theory in its narrower sense [7] are included. For valence properties at least, the four-component structure of the effective one-particle equations is much more important than relativistic corrections to the functional itself. This is not really a surprise given the success of the Dirac-Coulomb operator in wave function based relativistic ab initio theory. Therefore a major part of the applications of relativistic density functional theory is done performed non-rela-tivistic functionals. 

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