Zn-VI quasiparticle gaps and optical spectra from many-body calculations.

The electronic band structures of hexagonal ZnO and cubic ZnS, ZnSe, and ZnTe compounds are determined within hybrid-density-functional theory and quasiparticle calculations. It is found that the band-edge energies calculated on the [Formula: see text] (Zn chalcogenides) or GW (ZnO) level of theory agree well with experiment, while fully self-consistent QSGW calculations are required for the correct description of the Zn 3d bands. The quasiparticle band structures are used to calculate the linear response and second-harmonic-generation (SHG) spectra of the Zn-VI compounds. Excitonic effects in the optical absorption are accounted for within the Bethe-Salpeter approach. The calculated spectra are discussed in the context of previous experimental data and present SHG measurements for ZnO.

Phonon dispersion and zero-point renormalization of LiNbO3 from density-functional perturbation theory.

The vibrational properties of stoichiometric LiNbO3 are analyzed within density-functional perturbation theory in order to obtain the complete phonon dispersion of the material. The phonon density of states of the ferroelectric (paraelectric) phase shows two (one) distinct band gaps separating the high-frequency (∼800 cm(-1)) optical branches from the continuum of acoustic and lower optical phonon states. This result leads to specific heat capacites in close agreement with experimental measurements in the range 0-350 K and a Debye temperature of 574 K. The calculated zero-point renormalization of the electronic Kohn-Sham eigenvalues reveals a strong dependence on the phonon wave vectors, especially near [Formula: see text]. Integrated over all phonon modes, our results indicate a vibrational correction of the electronic band gap of 0.41 eV at 0 K, which is in excellent agreement with the extrapolated temperature-dependent measurements.

Spin excitations in solids from many-body perturbation theory.

Collective spin excitations form a fundamental class of excitations in magnetic materials. As their energy reaches down to only a few meV, they are present at all temperatures and substantially influence the properties of magnetic systems. To study the spin excitations in solids from first principles, we have developed a computational scheme based on many-body perturbation theory within the full-potential linearized augmented plane-wave (FLAPW) method. The main quantity of interest is the dynamical transverse spin susceptibility or magnetic response function, from which magnetic excitations, including single-particle spin-flip Stoner excitations and collective spin-wave modes as well as their lifetimes, can be obtained. In order to describe spin waves we include appropriate vertex corrections in the form of a multiple-scattering T matrix, which describes the coupling of electrons and holes with different spins. The electron-hole interaction incorporates the screening of the many-body system within the random-phase approximation. To reduce the numerical cost in evaluating the four-point T matrix, we exploit a transformation to maximally localized Wannier functions that takes advantage of the short spatial range of electronic correlation in the partially filled d or f orbitals of magnetic materials. The theory and the implementation are discussed in detail. In particular, we show how the magnetic response function can be evaluated for arbitrary k points. This enables the calculation of smooth dispersion curves, allowing one to study fine details in the k dependence of the spin-wave spectra. We also demonstrate how spatial and time-reversal symmetry can be exploited to accelerate substantially the computation of the four-point quantities. As an illustration, we present spin-wave spectra and dispersions for the elementary ferromagnet bcc Fe, B2-type tetragonal FeCo, and CrO2 calculated with our scheme. The results are in good agreement with available experimental data.

Hybrid functionals and GW approximation in the FLAPW method.

We present recent advances in numerical implementations of hybrid functionals and the GW approximation within the full-potential linearized augmented-plane-wave (FLAPW) method. The former is an approximation for the exchange­correlation contribution to the total energy functional in density-functional theory, and the latter is an approximation for the electronic self-energy in the framework of many-body perturbation theory. All implementations employ the mixed product basis, which has evolved into a versatile basis for the products of wave functions, describing the incoming and outgoing states of an electron that is scattered by interacting with another electron. It can thus be used for representing the nonlocal potential in hybrid functionals as well as the screened interaction and related quantities in GW calculations. In particular, the six-dimensional space integrals of the Hamiltonian exchange matrix elements (and exchange self-energy) decompose into sums over vector­matrix­vector products, which can be evaluated easily. The correlation part of the GW self-energy, which contains a time or frequency dependence, is calculated on the imaginary frequency axis with a subsequent analytic continuation to the real axis or, alternatively, by a direct frequency convolution of the Green function G and the dynamically screened Coulomb interaction W along a contour integration path that avoids the poles of the Green function. Hybrid-functional and GW calculations are notoriously computationally expensive. We present a number of tricks that reduce the computational cost considerably, including the use of spatial and time-reversal symmetries, modifications of the mixed product basis with the aim to optimize it for the correlation self-energy and another modification that makes the Coulomb matrix sparse, analytic expansions of the interaction potentials around the point of divergence at k = 0, and a nested density and density-matrix convergence scheme for hybrid-functional calculations. We show CPU timings for prototype semiconductors and illustrative results for GdN and ZnO.

Quasiparticle corrections to the electronic properties of anion vacancies at GaAs(110) and InP(110).

We propose a new method for calculating optical defect levels and thermodynamic charge-transition levels of point defects in semiconductors, which includes quasiparticle corrections to the Kohn-Sham eigenvalues of density-functional theory. Its applicability is demonstrated for anion vacancies at the (110) surfaces of III-V semiconductors. We find the (+/0) charge-transition level to be 0.49 eV above the surface valence-band maximum for GaAs(110) and 0.82 eV for InP(110). The results show a clear improvement over the local-density approximation and agree closely with an experimental analysis.