Fully self-consistent GW (sc-GW) – based on the iterative solution of Dyson’s equation – incorporates many-body correlation effects in the electronic ground-state, providing a recipe to consistently describe ground- and excited-states on an equal footing. We have implemented sc-GW in the localized basis all-electron code FHIaims [1]. We show that, for finite systems, the ground-state properties as well as the excitation spectrum of the sc-GW Green’s function are unique and are not affected by different initialization of the sc-GW loop, curing the pathological dependence on the starting point of one-shot GW (G0W0). In addition, self-consistency systematically improves ionization energies and Galitskii-Migdal total energies of closed shell systems compared to G0W0 based on Hartree-Fock and density-functional theory in local and semilocal approximations. Since our implementation is based on interacting Green’s functions (unlike all G0W0 implementations) it is also a first step towards going beyond the GW approach.
The most of the experimental measurable quantities in many-body electron system, such as the optical absorption, luminescent spectra and exciton effect, are related to the excitation states description. The density functional theory with local density approximation (DFT-LDA) as a ground state theory, i.e. the solutions based on the Kohn-Sham equation is a powerful tool for studying the ground state properties in many-particle systems. However, the first principles computation of excited states is more complexity than ground-state calculations. A key problem is that the exchange-correlation interaction in excited states is differ from the ground-states. In recent years, nevertheless, several electronic-excitation theories have been developed. The most important theoretical and computational method include the many-body perturbation theory which is based on the quasi-particle concept and the Green function equation, the time-dependent DFT and the Bethe-Salpeter equation for describing the electron-hole interaction. Among them the central ingredient is an electron's self-energy operator Σ that describes the exchange correlation effect beyond Hartree approximation. The implementations of the above theories are unavoidable to introduce some of approximations. A good approximation for Σ is the GW approach by Hedin. It is shown from computation simulations for many real condensed matter systems that the GW approach is a successful method for electronic-excitation problems. Another effective method for excited-states is so-called screen-exchange local-density approximation (sX-LDA). It is a combination of LDA and Hartree-Fock (HF)theory, in which the intrinsic local screen-exchange interaction has been replaced by a non-local one and a generalized Kohn-Sham equation (GKS) is given. Based on a PWscf package, the sX-LDA-PWscf method has been tested and indicates that an available approach for treating band-gap problem in semiconductors. In this paper, the many-body theories for the excitation process, its development and signification are reviewed. The relation and differences consist in different theoretical methods are discussed. On the based of above discussions, the applications of many-body theory to the band-band transition (band-gap underestimation problem) and exciton effect in semiconductors are presented.
GW calculations with a fully self-consistent Green's function
G and screened interaction
W---based on the iterative solution of the Dyson equation---provide a consistent framework for the description of ground- and excited-state properties of interacting many-body systems. We show that for closed-shell systems self-consistent
GW reaches the same final Green's function regardless of the initial reference state. Self-consistency systematically improves ionization energies and total energies of closed-shell systems compared to
G0W0 based on Hartree-Fock and (semi)local density-functional theory. These improvements also translate to the electron density, as exemplified by an improved description of dipole moments, and permit us to assess the quality of ground-state properties such as bond lengths and vibrational frequencies.