Pseudopotential potential

The first reliable energy band theories were based on a powerfiil approximation, call the pseudopotential approximation. Within this approximation, the all-electron potential corresponding to interaction of a valence electron with the iimer, core electrons and the nucleus is replaced by a pseudopotential. The pseudopotential reproduces only the properties of the outer electrons. There are rigorous theorems such as the Phillips-Kleinman cancellation theorem that can be used to justify the pseudopotential model [2, 3, 26]. The Phillips-Kleimnan cancellation theorem states that the orthogonality requirement of the valence states to the core states can be described by an effective repulsive... 

One can quantify the pseudopotential by writing the total crystalline potential for an elemental solid as... 

There are complicating issues in defmmg pseudopotentials, e.g. the pseudopotential in equation Al.3.78 is state dependent, orbitally dependent and the energy and spatial separations between valence and core electrons are sometimes not transparent. These are not insunnoimtable issues. The state dependence is usually weak and can be ignored. The orbital dependence requires different potentials for different angular momentum components. This can be incorporated via non-local operators. The distinction between valence and core states can be addressed by incorporating the core level in question as part of the valence shell. For... 

The pseudopotential is derived from an all-electron SIC-LDA atomic potential. The relaxation correction takes into account the relaxation of the electronic system upon the excitation of an electron [44]- The authors speculate that ... the ability of the SIRC potential to produce considerably better band structures than DFT-LDA may reflect an extra nonlocality in the SIRC pseudopotential, related to the nonlocality or orbital dependence in the SIC all-electron potential. In addition, it may mimic some of the energy and the non-local space dependence of the self-energy operator occurring in the GW approximation of the electronic many body problem [45]. 

One current limitation of orbital-free DFT is that since only the total density is calculated, there is no way to identify contributions from electronic states of a certain angular momentum character /. This identification is exploited in non-local pseudopotentials so that electrons of different / character see different potentials, considerably improving the quality of these pseudopotentials. The orbital-free metliods thus are limited to local pseudopotentials, connecting the quality of their results to the quality of tlie available local potentials. Good local pseudopotentials are available for the alkali metals, the alkaline earth metals and aluminium [100. 101] and methods exist for obtaining them for other atoms (see section VI.2 of [97]). 

The main problem related to the use of pseudopotentials in studies of solids under pressure is to make sure that the overlap of ionic cores does not increase significantly when interatomic distances decrease. The present study is certainly not affected by this potential pitfall since Ti-O distances typically change by no more than 0.1 A over the pressure range investigated. However, theoretical studies of fluorite and related phases at pressures of around 100 GPa should be performed with added caution. 

Table 2 shows that in the case of ratile the GGA overestimation of lattice constants is less important in the present calculation than in Ref. 3. Most likely explanation is that the GGA functional is used here only for solid state calculations and not for the pseudopotential generation from the free atom. This procedure has been shown to give more accurate structural results than with the GGA applied both in the potential generation and solid state... 

The basic idea of the pseudopotential theory is to replace the strong electron-ion potential by a much weaker potential - a pseudopotential that can describe the salient features of the valence electrons which determine most physical properties of molecules to a much greater extent than the core electrons do. Within the pseudopotential approximation, the core electrons are totally ignored and only the behaviour of the valence electrons outside the core region is considered as important and is described as accurately as possible [54]. Thus the core electrons and the strong ionic potential are replaced by a much weaker pseudopotential which acts on the associated valence pseudo wave functions rather than the real valence wave functions (p ). As... 

Kobayasi, T. and Nara, H. (1993) Properties of nonlocal pseudopotentials of Si and Ge optimized under full interdependence among potential parameters, Bull. Coll. Med. Sci. Tohoku Univ., 2, 7-16. 

Although the pseudopotential is, from its definition, a nonlocal operator, it is often represented approximately as a multiplicative potential. Parameters in some chosen functional form for this potential are chosen so that calculations of some physical properties, using this potential, give results agreeing with experiment. It is often the case that many properties can be calculated correctly with the same potential.43 One of the simplest forms for an atomic model effective potential is that of Ashcroft44 r l0(r — Rc), where the parameter is the core radius Rc and 6 is a step-function. 

One now has a picture of conduction electrons in the potential of the ions, which is really a collection of pseudopotentials. The energy of the electronic system obviously depends on the positions of the ions. From the electronic energy as a function of ionic positions, say Ue,(R), one could determine the equilibrium ionic configuration (interionic spacing in a crystal or ion density profile... 

With the addition of a pseudopotential interaction between electrons and metal ions, the density-functional approach has been used82 to calculate the effect of the solvent of the electrolyte phase on the potential difference across the surface of a liquid metal. The solvent is modeled as a repulsive barrier or as a region of dielectric constant greater than unity or both. Assuming no specific adsorption, the metal is supposed to be in contact with a monolayer of water, modeled as a region of 3-A thickness (diameter of a water molecule) in which the dielectric constant is 6 (high-frequency value, appropriate for nonorientable dipoles). Beyond this monolayer, the dielectric constant is assumed to take on the bulk liquid value of 78, although the calculations showed that the dielectric constant outside of the monolayer had only a small effect on the electronic profile. 

The model was also extended11 to single-crystal surfaces of silver. Although the calculated inner-layer capacitances varied in the right way from one face to another, the values were much too low. The problem was suspected to be due to the importance of the d electrons. What is still needed in this model is a better treatment of the solvent phase, valid at higher charge density, and a better way of deriving the repulsive potential of the solvent on the electrons, perhaps by a direct pseudopotential calculation, as done by Price and Halley.98,99... 

Another model which combined a model for the solvent with a jellium-type model for the metal electrons was given by Badiali et a/.83 The metal electrons were supposed to be in the potential of a jellium background, plus a repulsive pseudopotential averaged over the jellium profile. The solvent was modeled as a collection of equal-sized hard spheres, charged and dipolar. In this model, the distance of closest approach of ions and molecules to the metal surface at z = 0 is fixed in terms of the molecular and ionic radii. The effect of the metal on the solution is thus that of an infinitely smooth, infinitely high barrier, as well as charged surface. The solution species are also under the influence of the electronic tail of the metal, represented by an exponential profile. 

Local-density potentials greatly simplify the computational problems associated with defect calculations. In practice, however, such calculations still are very computer-intensive, especially when repeated cycles for different atomic positions are treated. In most cases the cores are eliminated from the calculation by the use of pseudopotentials, and considerable effort has gone into the development of suitable pseudopotentials for atoms of interest (see Hamann et al., 1979). 

Fig. 5. Contour plot of the adiabatic potential-energy surface of an H atom in the (110) plane for the neutral H—B pair from a local-density pseudopotential calculation. The boron atom is at the center. For every hydrogen position, the B and Si atoms are allowed to relax, but only unrelaxed positions are indicated in the figure (Reprinted with permission from the American Physical Society, Denteneer, P.J.H., Van de Walle, C.G., and Pantelides, S.T. (1989). Phys. Rev. B 39, 10809.)...

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