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arXiv:cond-mat/0304643

An ab-initio many-body method for electronic structure calculations of solids. I. Description of the method

I. Schnell, G. Czycholl, Robert C. Albers

Published Apr 28, 2003• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We propose a new, alternative method for ab-initio calculations of the electronic structure of solids, which has been specifically adapted to treat many-body effects in a more rigorous way than many existing ab-initio methods. We start from a standard band-structure calculation for an effective one-particle Hamiltonian approximately describing the material of interest. This yields a suitable set of one-particle basis functions, from which well localized Wannier functions can be constructed using a method proposed by Marzari and Vanderbilt. Within this (minimal) basis of localized Wannier functions the matrix elements of the non-interacting (one-particle) Hamiltonian as well as the Coulomb matrix elements can be calculated. The result is a many-body Hamiltonian in second quantization with parameters determined from first principles calculations for the material of interest. The Hamiltonian is in the form of a multi-band Hamiltonian in second quantization (a kind of extended, multi-band Hubbard model) such that all the standard many-body methods can be applied. We explicitly show how this approach can be solved in the simplest many-body approximation, the mean-field Hartree-Fock approximation (HFA), which takes into account exact exchange and corrects for self-interaction effects.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.cond-mat/0304643

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We propose a new, alternative method for ab-initio calculations of the electronic structure of solids, which has been specifically adapted to treat many-body effects in a more rigorous way than many existing ab-initio methods. We start from a standard band-structure calculation for an effective one-particle Hamiltonian approximately describing the material of interest. This yields a suitable set of one-particle basis functions, from which well localized Wannier functions can be constructed using a method proposed by Marzari and Vanderbilt. Within this (minimal) basis of localized Wannier functions the matrix elements of the non-interacting (one-particle) Hamiltonian as well as the Coulomb matrix elements can be calculated. The result is a many-body Hamiltonian in second quantization with parameters determined from first principles calculations for the material of interest. The Hamiltonian is in the form of a multi-band Hamiltonian in second quantization (a kind of extended, multi-band Hubbard model) such that all the standard many-body methods can be applied. We explicitly show how this approach can be solved in the simplest many-body approximation, the mean-field Hartree-Fock approximation (HFA), which takes into account exact exchange and corrects for self-interaction effects.
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.
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In this lecture we present many-body perturbation theory as a method to determine quasiparticle excitations in solids, especially electronic band structures, accurately from first principles.The main ingredient is the electronic self-energy that, in principle, contains all many-body exchange and correlation effects beyond the Hartree potential.As its exact mathematical expression is unknown, approximations must be used in practical calculations.The approximation is obtained using a systematic algebraic approach on the basis of Green function techniques.It constitutes an expansion of the self-energy up to linear order in the screened Coulomb potential, which describes the interaction between the quasiparticles and includes dynamic screening through the creation of exchange-correlation holes around the bare particles.The implementation of the approximation relies on a perturbative treatment starting from density functional theory.Besides a detailed mathematical discussion we focus on the underlying physical concepts and show some illustrative applications.
A local-orbital based ab initio approach to calculate correlation effects on quasi particle energies in insulating solids is presented. The use of localized Wannier-type Hartree Fock orbitals allows to efficiently devide correlation effects into classes of strong, medium or small weight. Subsequently the strongly contributing correlations are obtained from a Green's function calculated by exact diagonalization, while the rest is taken into account by a perturbative treatment. With this method the band structure of LiH is calculated and reasonable agreement with experiment is found.
Understanding emergent many-body phenomena in correlated materials remains one of the grandest challenges in solid-state quantum chemistry calculations. The individuality of electrons diminishes as correlation increases, which leads to the emergence of new features in the system. Seeking to address such problems accurately requires the aid of non-perturbative many-body techniques as well as the corresponding high-quality basis sets. In periodic systems, a given element may be present in different spatial arrangements displaying vastly different physical and chemical properties, and an elemental basis set independent of the physical properties of materials may lead to significant simulation inaccuracies. In fact, with the rapid progress of quantum chemistry methods in condensed-phase simulations, the need for a library of reliable Gaussian basis sets explicitly designed for periodic calculations has become urgent. In the meantime, the development of parameter-free, systematic and reliable quantum chemistry methods for simultaneously treating weak and strong correlations in periodic systems has never stopped. Their ability to treat realistic solid materials needs to be tested, and the obtained results can serve as benchmarks for empirical parameter-guided solid-state calculations. In this thesis, we present numerical studies of various solid-state systems, emphasizing the design and optimization of Gaussian basis sets and assessing the band structure properties of the periodic solid systems. The work begins by introducing the theoretical framework of the electronic structure theory and presenting the fundamentals of a fully self-consistent GW approximation and the self-energy embedding theory (SEET) in Chapters 2 and 3. It continues with a description of the Gaussian basis set optimization scheme we devised for solid-state quantum chemistry calculations. The scheme we present is designed to avoid a lack of material specificity within a given basis set by simultaneously minimizing the total energy of the system and optimizing the band energies when compared to the reference plane wave calculation while accounting for the overlap matrix condition number. We compare the quality of the Gaussian basis sets generated via our method against the existing basis sets. And the optimization scheme is tested to yield improved results. We finally present a quantitative study of electronic properties of realistic materials with the treatment of Green's function based weakly correlated self-consistent GW approximation and the strongly correlated self-energy embedding theory. In the transition metal oxide BiVO3, we found the inaccurate illustration of orbitals including t_{2g} in transition metal Vanadium by DFT. Our calculation shows a systematic trend of DFT failure in illustrating both insulating and metallic solutions, demonstrating the dangers of using DFT when the experimental data is scarce.
An interacting lattice model describing the subspace spanned by a set of strongly correlated bands is rigorously coupled to density functional theory to enable ab initio calculations of geometric and topological material properties. The strongly correlated subspace is identified from the occupation number band structure as opposed to a mean-field energy band structure. The self-consistent solution of the many-body model Hamiltonian and a generalized Kohn-Sham equation exactly incorporates momentum-dependent and crystal-symmetric correlations into electronic structure calculations in a way that does not rely on a separation of energy scales. Calculations for a multiorbital Hubbard model demonstrate that the theory accurately reproduces the many-body macroscopic polarization.