Convergence of many-body wave-function expansions using a plane-wave basis: From homogeneous electron gas to solid state systems

Author(s)
James J. Shepherd, Andreas Grüneis, George H. Booth, Georg Kresse, Ali Alavi
Abstract

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 Moller-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.

Organisation(s)
Computational Materials Physics
External organisation(s)
University of Cambridge
Journal
Physical Review B
Volume
86
No. of pages
14
ISSN
1098-0121
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.86.035111
Publication date
2012
Peer reviewed
Yes
Austrian Fields of Science 2012
103009 Solid state physics, 103015 Condensed matter, 103025 Quantum mechanics, 103036 Theoretical physics
Portal url
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/39a1727d-c1d1-47bd-bf4b-10beb3fd5a78