Electronic Transport Calculations Using Maximally-Localized Wannier Functions

I present a method to calculate the ballistic transport properties of atomic-scale structures under bias. The electronic structure of the system is calculated using the Kohn-Sham scheme of density functional theory (DFT). The DFT eigenvectors are then transformed into a set of maximally localized Wannier functions (MLWFs) [N. Marzari and D. Vanderbilt, Phys. Rev. B 56 (1997) 12847]. The MLWFs are used as a minimal basis set to obtain the Hamitonian matrices of the scattering region and the adjacent leads,which are needed for transport calculation using the nonequilibrium Green's function formalism. The coupling of the scattering region to the semi-infinite leads is described by the self-energies of the leads. Using the nonequilibrium Green's function method, one calculates self-consistently the charge distribution of the system under bias and evaluates the transmission and current through the system. To solve the Poisson equation within the scheme of MLWFs I introduce a computationally efficient method. The method is applied to a molecular hydrogen contact in two transition metal monatomic wires (Cu and Pt). It is found that for Pt the I-V characteristics is approximately linear dependence, however, for Cu the I-V characteristics manifests a linear dependence at low bias voltages and exhibits apparent nonlinearity at higher bias voltages. I have also calculated the transmission in the zero bias voltage limit for a single CO molecule adsorbed on Cu and Pt monatomic wires. While a chemical scissor effect occurs for the Cu monatomic wire with an adsorbed CO molecule, it is absent for the Pt monatomic wire due to the contribution of d-orbitals at the Fermi energy.     

CdTe和HgTe电子结构的紧束缚模型计算

基于局域密度近似(LDA或GGA)的密度泛函理论计算往往低估体系的禁带宽度,而这一低估对窄带隙半导体尤为严重.尽管基于混合泛函的密度泛函理论能有效地修正这一误差,但是由于计算量较大仍无法用于计算较大体系.本文发展了一组能够比较准确描述CdTe和HgTe晶体电子结构的紧束缚参数.将基于混合泛函的密度泛函计算结果作为输入,我们构建了正交的sp~3s~*基组下的紧束缚模型.此模型能够比较准确地描述能带结构在费米面附近4 eV范围内的色散关系.利用当前模型计算了CdTe和HgTe非晶的电子态密度,计算结果与他人的理论计算和实验值符合较好.     

Non-orthogonal tight-binding model for tellurium and selenium

Abstract

The twofold coordinated heavier group-VI elements tellurium and selenium with the trigonal crystal structure have unshared electron pairs (lone pairs) which control the interplay of the intra- and inter-chain interactions and their sensitivity on pressure and temperature. We have developed tight-binding (TB) parameters for the helical structures of tellurium and selenium using the Naval Research Laboratory Tight-Binding (NRL-TB) method. The TB parameters were derived by fitting to the band structures and total energies of density functional theory (DFT) calculations. We have applied the TB parameters to study the phase stabilities of different structures under hydrostatic pressure. We have predicted (without fitting) the volume dependence of the rhombohedral and diamond structures, the bcc to rhombohedral and rhombohedral to simple cubic phase transitions and the elastic constants of the trigonal structures, all in agreement with ab initio and experimental results. While the results for the unrelaxed vacancy formation energies and surface energies are in good agreement with the DFT values, we find large discrepancies for the relaxed values indicating that the present set of TB parameters cannot accurately capture the inter-chain interactions.     

Construction and solution of a Wannier-functions based Hamiltonian in the pseudopotential plane-wave framework for strongly correlated materials

Ab initio determination of model Hamiltonian parameters for strongly correlated materials is a key issue in applying many-particle theoretical tools to real narrow-band materials. We propose a selfcontained calculation scheme to construct, with an ab initio approach, and solve such a Hamiltonian. The scheme uses a Wannier-function-basis set, with the Coulomb interaction parameter U obtained specifically for theseWannier functions via constrained Density functional theory (DFT) calculations. The Hamiltonian is solved by Dynamical Mean-Field Theory (DMFT) with the effective impurity problem treated by the Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) method. Our scheme is based on the pseudopotential plane-wave method, which makes it suitable for developments addressing the challenging problem of crystal structural relaxations and transformations due to correlation effects. We have applied our scheme to the “charge transfer insulator” material nickel oxide and demonstrate a good agreement with the experimental photoemission spectra.     

Classical Representation of a Quantum System at Equilibrium

A quantum system at equilibrium is represented by a corresponding classical system, chosen to reproduce the thermodynamic and structural properties. The objective is to develop a means for exploiting strong coupling classical methods (e.g., MD, integral equations, DFT) to describe quantum systems. The classical system has an effective temperature, local chemical potential, and pair interaction that are defined by requiring equivalence of the grand potential and its functional derivatives with respect to the external and pair potentials for the classical and quantum systems. Practical inversion of this mapping for the classical properties is effected via the hypernetted chain approximation, leading to representations as functionals of the quantum pair correlation function. As an illustration, the parameters of the classical system are determined approximately such that ideal gas and weak coupling RPA limits are preserved (© 2011 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Dynamics of Logamediate and Intermediate Scenarios in the Dark Energy Filled Universe

We have considered a model of two component mixture i.e., mixture of Chaplygin gas and barotropic fluid with tachyonic field. In the case, when they have no interaction then both of them retain their own properties. Let us consider an energy flow between barotropic and tachyonic fluids. In both the cases we find the exact solutions for the tachyonic field and the tachyonic potential and show that the tachyonic potential follows the asymptotic behavior. We have considered an interaction between these two fluids by introducing a coupling term. Finally, we have considered a model of three component mixture i.e., mixture of tachyonic field, Chaplygin gas and barotropic fluid with or without interaction. The coupling functions decays with time indicating a strong energy flow at the initial period and weak stable interaction at later stage. To keep the observational support of recent acceleration we have considered two particular forms (i) Logamediate Scenario and (ii) Intermediate Scenario, of evolution of the Universe. We have examined the natures of the recent developed statefinder parameters and slow-roll parameters in both scenarios with and without interactions in whole evolution of the universe.     

Statistical mechanics of inhomogeneous model colloid—polymer mixtures

We describe two strategies for tackling the equilibrium statistical mechanics of inhomogeneous colloid—polymer mixtures treated in terms of the simple Asakura—Oosawa—Vrij (AO) model, in which colloid—colloid and colloid—polymer interactions are hard-sphere like, whereas the polymer—polymer interaction is zero (perfectly interpenetrating polymer spheres). The first strategy is based upon integrating out the degrees of freedom of the polymer spheres to obtain an effective one-component Hamiltonian for the colloids. This is particularly effective for small size ratios q = σ_p/σ_c < 0.1547, where σ_p and σ_c are the diameters of colloid and polymer spheres, respectively, since in this regime three and higher body contributions to the effective Hamiltonian vanish. In the second strategy we employ a geometry based density functional theory (DFT), specifically designed for the AO model but based on Rosenfeld's fundamental measure DFT for additive mixtures of hard-spheres, that treats colloid and polymer on an equal footing and which accounts for the fluid-fluid phase separation occurring for larger values of q. Using the DFT we investigate the properties of the ‘free’ interface between colloid-rich (liquid) and colloid-poor (gas) fluid phases and adsorption phenomena at the interface between the AO mixture and a hard-wall, for a wide range of size ratios. In particular, for q = 0.6 to 1.0, we find rich interfacial phenomena, including oscillatory density profiles at the free interface and novel wetting and layering phase transitions at the hard-wall-colloid gas interface. Where appropriate we compare our DFT results with those from computer simulations and experiment. We outline several very recent extensions of the basic AO model for which geometry based DFTs have also been developed. These include a model in which the effective polymer sphere—polymer sphere interaction is treated as a repulsive step function rather than ideal and one in which the depletant is a fluid of infinitely thin rods (needles) with orientational degrees of freedom rather than (non-interacting) polymer spheres. We comment on the differences between results obtained from these extensions and those of the basic AO model. Whilst the interfacial properties of the AO model share features in common with the those of simple (atomic) fluids, with the polymer reservoir density replacing the inverse temperature, we emphasize that there are important differences which are related to the many-body character of the effective one-component Hamiltonian.     

Microscopic Theoretical Calculations of R—Line Thermal Shifts and Broadenings of MgO：Cr^3＋

By taking into account all the irreducible representations and their components in the electron-phonon interaction (EPI) as well as all the levels and the admixtures of basic wavefunctions within d^3 electronic configuration,the values of all the parameters in the expressions of thermal shift (TS) and thermal broadening (TB) due to EPI for the ground level,R level and R line of MgO:Cr^3 have microscopically been evaluated;and then,TS and TB of R line and various contributions to them have uniformly been calculated.The results are in very good agreement with the experimental data.It is found that all the three terms of TS due to EPI are red shifts;the Raman term is the largest one,and the optical-branch term and neighbor-level term are important for TS;the contribution to TS from thermal expansion is blue shift,which is also important.The R-line TS of MgO:Cr^3 comes from the first-order term of EPI.The elastic Raman scattering of acoustic phonons plays a dominant role in R-line TB of MgO:Cr^3 .For both TS and TB,it is very important to take into account all the admixtures of basic wavefunctions within d^3 electronic configuration.     

Nonlinear theory for epitaxial growth of semiconductor alloys on vicinal surfaces

A set of coupled nonlinear diffusion equations is derived for describing the epitaxial growth of semiconductor alloys on vicinal surfaces. The equations include diffusion and a quadratic interaction term to account for incipient island formation. A criterion is obtained for determining the temperature T_c at which growth becomes dominated by step advancement as a function of alloy composition, substrate temperature, and growth rate. The sensitivity of T_c to variations in the interaction parameters is briefly discussed.     

Magnetic properties of Pd atomic clusters from different theoretical approaches

We report a comparative study of the magnetic properties of free-standing Pd_N clusters (2 ≤N ≤21) obtained through two different theoretical approaches that are extensively employed in electronic structure calculations: a semi-empirical Tight-Binding (TB) model and an ab-initio DFT pseudopotential model. Conclusions are drawn about the reliability of the TB model for the investigation of the electronic structure and magnetic properties of such complex 4d Transition Metals (TM) systems and we compare the results with previous systematic DFT calculations and comment on some available experiments in the literature.     

Developments in excited-state density functional theory

This article discusses the reasons behind the apparent lack of success of density functional theory (DFT), during the past three decades, with excited states of many-electron systems. It describes various variational and non-variational approaches developed so far for dealing with this problem. Those include Theophilou’s equiensemble approach, extended to unequally weighted ensembles by Gross et al., Fritsche’s wavefunction partitioning approach, local scaling transformation theory by Kryachko et al., the work-function formalism developed by Harbola and Sahni, etc. Through intimate connections between time-dependence and excited states, under a perturbation, various time-dependent (TD) DFT approaches to excited states, e.g., a quantum fluid dynamical approach, a TD density-functional response theory and a TD optimized effective potential approach, are also reviewed.     

A Pair of Zakharov Equations with Collisional Damping and the Motion of Langmuir Soliton

The effects of collisional damping on high frequency Langmuir wave and low frequency ion-acoustic wave have been investigated. It is found that the governing equations for the waves are a pair of Zakharov equations with a damping term in each equation. By using the treatment which consists of approximate solutions of the balance equations, a set of first order ordinary differential equations have been derived for the solution parameters in order to study the motion of Zakharov solitons in presence of damping. It has been shown that the width of the soliton remains constant throughout the motion.     

Microscopic—Theoretical Calculations of R—Line Thermal Shifts and Broadenings of MgO：V^2＋

A great improvement on a previous work (PHYS.Rev.B48 (1993) 14067) has been made.By taking into account all the irreducible representations and their components in the electron-phonon interaction (EPI) as well as all the levels and the admixtures of basic wavefunctions within d^3 electronic configuration,the values of all the parameters in the expressions of thermal shift(TS) and thermal broadening (TB) from EPI for the ground level,R level and R line of MgO:V^2 have microscopically been evaluated;and then,both the TS and TB of R line and various contributions to them have uniformly been calculated.The results are in very good agreement with the experimental data.It is found that all the three terms of TS from EPI are red shifts;the term of the contribution to TS from thermal expansion is blue shift.The Raman term is the largest,and the other terms are also important for TS.The R-line TS of MgO:V^2 comes from the first-order term of EPI.The elastic Raman scattering of acoustic phonons plays a dominant role in R-line TB of MgO:V^2 .For calculations of both the TS and TB,it is very important to take into account all the admixtures of wavefunctions.     

The Rotational Spectrum of SO(2) and the Determination of the Hyperfine Constants and Nuclear Magnetic Shielding Tensors of (33)SO(2) and SO(17)O

Rotational analyses of the B(2)Sigma(+)(u) --> X(2)Sigma(+)(g) system of the (14)N(+)(2) molecule have been extended to include the vibrational levels up to v' = 4. Spectral data from 20 bands obtained from high-resolution Fourier transform spectrometry of a hollow-cathode and a Pointolite lamp were included in the analysis. A global deperturbation yielded molecular parameters of the highly perturbed B(2)Sigma state and interaction parameters A(2)Pi(u) approximately B(2)Sigma(u) with a standard deviation of 0.011 cm(-1). Rotational term values of the B(2)Sigma(+) state were also determined. New perturbations in the B(2)Sigma(+) (v = 0) level have been observed at N approximately 85 and N approximately 96. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.