We introduce a novel and efficient explicitly correlated implementation of second-order perturbation theory for solids. The required three-electron integrals are computed directly using a plane wave basis set. We parametrize the employed correlation factors using results previously obtained for a finite uniform electron gas simulation cell. We demonstrate for a range of solids that basis set converged correlation energies, equilibrium volumes, and bulk moduli can be obtained efficiently in this theory using a few ten orbitals per atom. To stretch the capabilities of this novel method we compute the Schottky defect formation energy in MgO, studying systems with 54 atoms in the supercell. We verify the accuracy of the calculated formation energies using the more accurate coupled cluster singles and doubles theory. Furthermore, we discuss other potential applications for the derived and implemented expressions such as an occupied orbital only correlation energy functional.
We introduce a novel and efficient explicitly correlated implementation of second-order perturbation theory for solids. The required three-electron integrals are computed directly using a plane wave basis set. We parametrize the employed correlation factors using results previously obtained for a finite uniform electron gas simulation cell. We demonstrate for a range of solids that basis set converged correlation energies, equilibrium volumes, and bulk moduli can be obtained efficiently in this theory using a few ten orbitals per atom. To stretch the capabilities of this novel method we compute the Schottky defect formation energy in MgO, studying systems with 54 atoms in the supercell. We verify the accuracy of the calculated formation energies using the more accurate coupled cluster singles and doubles theory. Furthermore, we discuss other potential applications for the derived and implemented expressions such as an occupied orbital only correlation energy functional.
Accurate wave-function descriptions of pristine and defected solids remain challenging because of the simultaneous presence of finite-size, basis-set, and correlation errors. While embedding techniques alleviate finite-size effects and correlated wave-function approaches systematically improve correlation, basis-set incompleteness continues to limit practical accuracy. Here, we present a study of transcorrelated (TC) many-body wave-function methods on properties of solid state systems. We augment the existing xTC theory to periodic systems, and establish an unified transcorrelated embedding framework that integrates periodic TC theory with fragment-based correlated solvers. Using silicon as a test case, we validate the method against coupled-cluster, FCIQMC, and diffusion Monte Carlo benchmarks for bulk. Then, we apply transcorrelated embedding to the calculation of formation energies of two silicon self-interstitials. The TC Hamiltonian yields rapid basis convergence and quantitatively reliable defect formation energies at the triple- ζ level, substantially reducing the basis-set bottleneck for wave-function treatments of crystalline defects.
Electronic structure of materials from first principles is essential for one-to-one comparisons between theories and experiments. However, the many-body effects resulting from electron correlation and their interplay with other degrees of freedom pose a great challenge to design an ab initio approximate method with good accuracy and efficiency at the same time. In this thesis, we present our recent developments of ab initio many-body theory for solids based on the finite-temperature Green’s function formalism. We begin by reviewing the basic concepts and definitions of realistic electronic Hamiltonians (Ch. 2) as well as Green’s functions at finite temperature (Ch. 3). Overviews of self-consistent many-body perturbation theories and quantum embedding theories are then presented in Chs. 4 and 5 as complementary materials for the following chapters. In Ch. 6, we present algorithms and implementation details for the finite-temperature self-consistent GW (scGW) method in Gaussian-type orbitals for solids. Our implementation is based on the finite-temperature Green’s function formalism in which all equations are solved on the imaginary axis, without resorting to analytical continuation during the self-consistency. No quasiparticle approximation is employed and all matrix elements of self-energies are explicitly evaluated. We show agreement with other, differently formulated finite-temperature scGW implementations. By migrating computationally intensive calculations to GPUs, we obtain scalable results on large supercomputers with nearly optimal performance. Inclusion of relativistic effects in scGW is discussed in Ch. 7. Our formulation of relativistic scGW is based on the exact two-component formalism with one-electron approximation (X2C1e) and non-relativistic Coulomb interactions. Our theory allows us to study scalar relativistic effects, spin-orbit coupling, and their interplay with electron correlation without adjustable parameters. We examine the effect of the X2C1e by comparison to the established four-component formalism and reach excellent agreement. The simplicity of X2C1e enables construction of higher order theories, such as embedding theories, on top of perturbative calculations. In Ch. 8, we use self-energy embedding theory (SEET) to study the spectra of the prototypical undistorted cubic perovskites SrVO3 and SrMnO3. In the strongly correlated metallic SrVO3, we find that the usual attribution of the satellite peaks at -1.8 eV to Hund or Hubbard physics in the t2g orbitals is inconsistent with our calculations. In the strongly correlated insulator SrMnO3 we recover insulating behavior due to a feedback effect between the strongly correlated orbitals and the weakly correlated environment. Our calculation shows a systematic convergence of spectral features as the space of strongly correlated orbitals is enlarged, paving the way to a systematic parameter-free study of correlated perovskites. Lastly, in Ch. 9, we apply the Green’s function coupled cluster singles and doubles (GFCCSD) impurity solver to realistic impurity problems in strongly correlated solids within the framework of SEET. We describe the implementation details of our Green’s function coupled cluster (GFCC) solver, investigate its performance, and highlight potential advantages and problems on examples of impurities created for antiferromagnetic MnO and paramagnetic SrMnO3. GFCCSD provides satisfactory descriptions for weakly and moderately correlated impurities with sizes that are intractable by existing accurate impurity solvers such as exact diagonalization. However, when correlations become strong, the singles and doubles approximation used in GFCC could lead to instabilities in searching for the particle number present in impurity problems.
Using the finite simulation-cell homogeneous electron gas (HEG) as a model, we investigate the convergence of the correlation energy to the complete-basis-set (CBS) limit in methods utilizing plane-wave wave-function expansions. Simple analytic and numerical results from second-order M\o{}ller-Plesset theory (MP2) suggest a 1/M decay of the basis-set incompleteness error where M is the number of plane waves used in the calculation, allowing for straightforward extrapolation to the CBS limit. As we shall show, the choice of basis-set truncation when constructing many-electron wave functions is far from obvious, and here we propose several alternatives based on the momentum transfer vector, which greatly improve the rate of convergence. This is demonstrated for a variety of wave-function methods, from MP2 to coupled-cluster doubles theory and the random-phase approximation plus second-order screened exchange. Finite basis-set energies are presented for these methods and compared with exact benchmarks. A transformation can map the orbitals of a general solid state system onto the HEG plane-wave basis and thereby allow application of these methods to more realistic physical problems. We demonstrate this explicitly for solid and molecular lithium hydride.
A systematically converging series of ab initio, postdensity functional, size-consistent, electron-correlated approximations is desired for predictive computing of electronic band structures of insulating, semiconducting, and metallic solids. A series that meets all of these desiderata (except the applicability to metals) is ab initio many-body Green’s function theory based on Gaussian-type orbital (GTO) basis sets. Here, its leading-order approximation, the second-order Green’s function (GF2) method in the diagonal and frequency-independent approximations with the aug-cc-pVDZ basis set, is applied to the fundamental band gaps of three semiconductors (diamond, silicon, and silicon carbide in the zincblende structure) using cluster models. Corrections are made to the basis set incompleteness errors by the explicit correlation (F12) ansatz (GF2-F12) for the valence band edges. The crystals are modeled as surface-passivated clusters of increasing sizes, whose wave functions are expanded by up to 2709 GTO basis functions. Immense computational costs of these calculations are overcome by the highly scalable stochastic algorithm of the Monte Carlo GF2-F12 method, whose operation cost per state increases only as a cubic power of system size, which has a tiny memory footprint and easily achieves near-perfect parallel efficiency on thousands of CPUs or on hundreds of GPUs. The correlated, F12-corrected highest-occupied and lowest-unoccupied molecular orbital energy (HOMO–LUMO) gap is 5.78 ± 0.07 eV for C 87 H 76 as compared with the experimental value of the fundamental (indirect) band gap of bulk diamond at 5.48 eV. The correlated, F12-corrected HOMO–LUMO gaps for Si 75 H 76 and Si 32 C 43 H 76 are 2.56 ± 0.15 and 3.50 ± 0.12 eV, respectively, which are expected to decrease further with increasing cluster sizes. The experimental fundamental (indirect) band gaps of bulk silicon and silicon carbide are 1.17 and 2.42 eV, respectively.
Density functional theory with plane-wave basis sets is widely employed in computational materials science, including applications to isolated molecular systems. However, the inadequate description of electron correlation remains a fundamental limitation. Accurate correlation treatments based on many-body Hamiltonians require reliable representations of both occupied and virtual orbitals, yet virtual orbitals are often poorly described in conventional computational schemes, resulting in reduced accuracy. In this work, we introduce localized correlation-converged virtual orbitals (LCCVOs) as an efficient basis for constructing accurate many-body Hamiltonians in molecular systems. Using a substantially reduced number of orbitals, the LCCVO framework yields dissociation energies for singlet, doublet, and triplet molecules that are comparable to, and in many cases exceed, those obtained with high-level correlation-consistent basis sets such as cc-pVXZ (X = D, T, Q, 5). These results demonstrate the efficiency, scalability, and robustness of the LCCVO approach for high-accuracy quantum chemical calculations.
Explicit expressions for electron correlation at the second-order many-body perturbation-theory [MBPT(2)] level are presented and implemented for the total energy per unit cell and for the band structure of extended systems. In the latter case, a formula is presented for a direct evaluation of the band gap rather than obtaining it as a difference of two large numbers. Application is made to alternating trans-polyacetylene. We assess the convergence of MBPT(2) with the number of unit cells (N) included in the lattice summations, the number of k-points (K) taken for the integrals over k in the first Brillouin zone, and the cutoff threshold (10−C) for the two-electron integrals. The MBPT(2) correlation correction to the band structure converges very slowly with N and demands a large K while the MBPT(2) correction to the total energy per unit cell converges much faster with N and needs a much smaller K. Neither MBPT(2) correction is sensitive to the cutoff of the two-electron atomic orbital integrals, 10−C, when C≥5. For polyacetylene, the MBPT(2) band gap is much improved from the SCF result, but does not agree with previous numerical data. Analysis shows that the previous MBPT(2) results were obtained either with too few unit cells such that the convergence with N had not been reached, or that the zeroth-order Hartree–Fock results were inadequately converged. MBPT(2) with a DZP basis improves the Hartree–Fock band gap from 5.57 to 3.22 eV at the experimentally estimated geometry, compared to the measured ∼2 eV peak in the absorption spectrum of the system. We verify our results with three independent programs. We also study the band gap as a function of geometry.