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We report a scalable Fortran implementation of the phaseless auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo (ph-AFQMC) and demonstrate its excellent performance and beneficial scaling with respect to system size. Furthermore, we investigate modifications of the phaseless approximation that can help to reduce the overcorrelation problems common to the ph-AFQMC. We apply the method to the 26 molecules in the HEAT set, the benzene molecule, and water clusters. We observe a mean absolute deviation of the total energy of 1.15 kcal/mol for the molecules in the HEAT set; close to chemical accuracy. For the benzene molecule, the modified algorithm despite using a single-Slater-determinant trial wavefunction yields the same accuracy as the original phaseless scheme with 400 Slater determinants. Despite these improvements, we find systematic errors for the CN, CO$_2$, and O$_2$ molecules that need to be addressed with more accurate trial wavefunctions. For water clusters, we find that the ph-AFQMC yields excellent binding energies that differ from CCSD(T) by typically less than 0.5 kcal/mol., Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures

Optical conductivity of an interacting polaron gas is calculated within an extended random phase approximation which takes into account mixing of collective excitations of the electron gas with LO phonons. This mixing is important for the optical response of strongly polar crystals where the static dielectric constant is rather high: strontium titanate is the case. The present calculation sheds light on unexplained features of experimentally observed optical conductivity spectra in $n$-doped SrTiO$_{3}$. These features appear to be due to dynamic screening of the electron-electron interaction by polar optical phonons and hence do not require additional mechanisms for the explanation., Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure

The dielectric function method for superconductivity has been applied to SrTiO$_{3}$ accounting for the non-parabolic dispersion of charge carriers in the conduction band and for the dispersion of optical phonons based on density functional theory calculations. The obtained critical temperatures of the superconducting phase transition in SrTiO$_{3}$ are in agreement with experiments in the density range $n\sim5\times10^{18}$ to $5\times10^{20}$ cm$^{-3}$. The dielectric function method predicts also the sign of the anomalous isotope effect in strontium titanate, in line with recent observations., Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures, submitted to the Special Issue of the Journal of Superconductivity and Novel Magnetism

The adsorption energy of benzene on various metal substrates is predicted using the random phase approximation (RPA) for the correlation energy. Agreement with available experimental data is systematically better than 10% for both coinage and reactive metals. The results are also compared with more approximate methods, including vdW-density functional theory (DFT), as well as dispersion corrected DFT functionals. Although dispersion corrected DFT can yield accurate results, for instance, on coinage metals, the adsorption energies are clearly overestimated on more reactive transition metals. Furthermore, coverage dependent adsorption energies are well described by the RPA. This shows that for the description of aromatic molecules on metal surfaces further improvements in density functionals are necessary, or more involved many body methods such as the RPA are required., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, 1 table

We present an embedding approach for semiconductors and insulators based on or- bital rotations in the space of occupied Kohn-Sham orbitals. We have implemented our approach in the popular VASP software package. We demonstrate its power for defect structures in silicon and polaron formation in titania, two challenging cases for conventional Kohn-Sham density functional theory., Comment: 2 figures

We review recent developments in electronic structure calculations that go beyond state-of-the-art methods such as density functional theory (DFT) and dynamical mean field theory (DMFT). Specifically, we discuss the following methods: GW as implemented in the Vienna {\it ab initio} simulation package (VASP) with the self energy on the imaginary frequency axis, GW+DMFT, and ab initio dynamical vertex approximation (D$\Gamma$A). The latter includes the physics of GW, DMFT and non-local correlations beyond, and allows for calculating (quantum) critical exponents. We present results obtained by the three methods with a focus on the benchmark material SrVO$_3$., Comment: tutorial review submitted to EPJ-ST (scientific report of research unit FOR 1346); 11 figures 27 pages

We present a benchmark of the density functional linear response calculation of NMR shieldings within the Gauge-Including Projector-Augmented-Wave method against all-electron Augmented-Plane-Wave$+$local-orbital and uncontracted Gaussian basis set results for NMR shieldings in molecular and solid state systems. In general, excellent agreement between the aforementioned methods is obtained. Scalar relativistic effects are shown to be quite large for nuclei in molecules in the deshielded limit. The small component makes up a substantial part of the relativistic corrections., Comment: 3 figures, supplementary material included

Modern electronic devices are unthinkable without the well-controlled formation of interfaces at heterostructures. These often involve at least one amorphous material. Modeling such interfaces poses a significant challenge, since a meaningful result can only be expected by using huge models or by drawing from many statistically independent samples. Here we report on the results of high throughput calculations for interfaces between crystalline silicon (c-Si) and amorphous silicon nitride (a-Si$_3$N$_{3.5}$:H), which are omnipresent in commercially available solar cells. The findings reconcile only partly understood key features. At the interface, threefold coordinated Si atoms are present. These are caused by the structural mismatch between the amorphous and crystalline part. The local Fermi level of undoped c-Si lies well below that of a-SiN:H. To align the Fermi levels in the device, charge is transferred from the a-SiN:H part to the c-Si part resulting in an abundance of positively charged, threefold coordinated Si atoms at the interface. This explains the existence of a positive, fixed charge at the interface that repels holes.

The behavior of electrons in the conduction band of TiO2 and other transition-metal oxides is key to the many applications of these materials. Experiments seem to produce conflicting results: optical and spin-resonance techniques reveal strongly localized small polarons, while electrical measurements show high mobilities that can only be explained by delocalized free electrons. By means of hybrid functional calculations we resolve this apparent contradiction and show that small polarons can actually coexist with delocalized electrons in the conduction band of TiO2, the former being energetically only slightly more favorable. We also find that small polarons can form complexes with oxygen vacancies and ionized shallow-donor impurities, explaining the rich spectrum of Ti$^{3+}$ species observed in electron spin resonance experiments.

Using the newly developed VASP2WANNIER90 interface we have constructed maximally localized Wannier functions (MLWFs) for the e_g states of the prototypical Jahn-Teller magnetic perovskite LaMnO3 at different levels of approximation for the exchange-correlation kernel. These include conventional density functional theory (DFT) with and without additional on-site Hubbard U term, hybrid-DFT, and partially self-consistent GW. By suitably mapping the MLWFs onto an effective e_g tight-binding (TB) Hamiltonian we have computed a complete set of TB parameters which should serve as guidance for more elaborate treatments of correlation effects in effective Hamiltonian-based approaches. The method-dependent changes of the calculated TB parameters and their interplay with the electron-electron (el-el) interaction term are discussed and interpreted. We discuss two alternative model parameterizations: one in which the effects of the el-el interaction are implicitly incorporated in the otherwise "noninteracting" TB parameters, and a second where we include an explicit mean-field el-el interaction term in the TB Hamiltonian. Both models yield a set of tabulated TB parameters which provide the band dispersion in excellent agreement with the underlying ab initio and MLWF bands., Comment: 30 pages, 7 figures

We perform a comparative \textit{ab-initio} study of Mn-doped Germanium semiconductor using the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) exchange-correlation functional, DFT+$U$ and Heyd-Scuseria-Ernzerhof hybrid functional (HSE). We show that the HSE functional is able to correctly account for the relevant ground state properties of the host matrix as well as of Mn-doped semiconductor. Although the DFT+$U$ and the HSE description are very similar, some differences still remain. In particular, the half-metallicity is lost using DFT+$U$ when a suitable $U$ value, tuned to recover the photoemission spectra, is employed. For comparison, we also discuss the case of Mn in Silicon., Comment: Phys. Rev. B (in press)-Typos corrected- References added

We present an ab-initio study of the Mn substitution for Ga in GaN using the Heyd-Scuseria-Ernzerhof hybrid functional (HSE). Contrary to semi-local functionals, the majority Mn t$_{2}$ manifold splits into an occupied doublet and an unoccupied singlet well above the Fermi-level resulting in an insulating groundstate, which is further stabilized by a sizeable Jahn-Teller distortion. The predictions are confirmed using $GW$ calculations and are in agreement with experiment. A transition from a localized to a delocalized Mn hole state is predicted from GaN to GaAs., Comment: 5 pages; 3 figures; to be published in Physical Review B: Rapid Communications

The present {\em ab initio} study shows that in BaBiO$_3$, Bi$^{3+}$ sites can trap two holes from the valence band to form Bi$^{5+}$ cations. The trapping is accompanied by large local lattice distortions, therefore the composite particle consisting of the electronic-hole and the local lattice phonon field forms a polaron. Our study clearly shows that even $sp$ elements can trap carriers at lattice sites, if local lattice relaxations are sufficiently large to screen the localised hole. The derived model describes all relevant experimental results, and settles the issue of why hole doped BaBiO$_3$ remains semiconducting upon moderate hole doping., Comment: Physical Review Letters, accepted (2009)

Experimentally, the intermetallic compound Mn$_{4}$FeGe$_{3}$ has been recently shown to exhibit enhanced magnetic properties and spin polarization compared to the Mn$_{5}$Ge$_{3}$ parent compound. The present {\em ab-initio} study focusses on the effect of Fe substitution on the electronic and magnetic properties of the compound. Our calculations reveal that the changes on the Fermi surface of the doped compound are remarkable and provide explanations for the enhanced spin-polarization observed. Finally, we show that it is indeed possible to tune the degree of spin-polarization upon Fe doping, thus making the Mn$_{1-x}$Fe$_{x}$Ge$_{3}$ intermetallic alloy very promising for future spintronic applications., Comment: 8 pages, 1 fig

A study of the adsorption of CO on late 4d and $5d$ transition metal (111) surfaces (Ru, Rh, Pd, Ag, Os, Ir, and Pt) considering atop and hollow site adsorption is presented. The applied functionals include the gradient corrected PBE and BLYP functional, and the corresponding hybrid Hartree-Fock density functionals HSE and B3LYP. We find that PBE based hybrid functionals (specifically HSE) yield, with the exception of Pt, the correct site order on all considered metals, but they also considerably overestimate the adsorption energies compared to experiment. On the other hand, the semi-local BLYP functional and the corresponding hybrid functional B3LYP yield very satisfactory adsorption energies and the correct adsorption site for all surfaces. We are thus faced with a Procrustean problem: the B3LYP and BLYP functionals seem to be the overall best choice for describing adsorption on metal surfaces, but they simultaneously fail to account well for the properties of the metal, vastly overestimating the equilibrium volume and underestimating the atomization energies. Setting out from these observations, general conclusions are drawn on the relative merits and drawbacks of various semi-local and hybrid functionals. The discussion includes a revised version of the PBE functional specifically optimized for bulk properties and surface energies (PBEsol), a revised version of the PBE functional specifically optimized to predict accurate adsorption energies (rPBE), as well as the aforementioned BLYP functional. We conclude that no semi-local functional is capable to describe all aspects properly, and including non-local exchange also only improves some, but worsens other properties., Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures; to be published in New Journal of Physics

$\rm BaBiO_3$ is characterized by a charge disproportionation with half of the Bi atoms possessing a valence 3+ and half a valence 5+. Because of selfinteraction errors, local and semi-local density functionals fail to describe the charge disproportionation quantitatively, yielding a too small structural distortion and no band gap. Using hybrid functionals we obtain a satisfactory description of the structural, electronic, optical, and vibrational properties of $\rm BaBiO_3$. The results obtained using GW (Green's function G and screened Coulomb potential W) based schemes on top of hybrid functionals, including fully selfconsistent GW calculations with vertex corrections in the dielectric screening, qualitatively confirm the HSE picture but a systematic overestimation of the bandgap by about 0.4 eV is observed., Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures

We present a detailed study of the adsorption of CO on Cu, Rh, and Pt (111) surfaces in top and hollow sites. The study has been performed using the local density approximation, the gradient corrected functional PBE, and the hybrid Hartree-Fock density functionals PBE0 and HSE03 within the framework of generalized Kohn-Sham density functional theory using a plane-wave basis set. As expected, the LDA and GGA functionals show a tendency to favor the hollow sites, at variance with experimental findings that give the top site as the most stable adsorption site. The PBE0 and HSE03 functionals reduce this tendency. In fact, they predict the correct adsorption site for Cu and Rh but fail for Pt. But even in this case, the hybrid functional destabilizes the hollow site by 50 meV compared to the PBE functional. The results of the total energy calculations are presented along with an analysis of the projected density of states., Comment: 32 pages, 6 tables, 3 figures. (Re)Submitted to Phys. Rev. B; LDA results added in the tables; minor changes in the text

We present a comparative full-potential study of generalized Kohn-Sham schemes (gKS) with explicit focus on their suitability as starting point for the solution of the quasiparticle equation. We compare $G_0W_0$ quasiparticle band structures calculated upon LDA, sX, HSE03, PBE0, and HF functionals for exchange and correlation (XC) for Si, InN and ZnO. Furthermore, the HSE03 functional is studied and compared to the GGA for 15 non-metallic materials for its use as a starting point in the calculation of quasiparticle excitation energies. For this case, also the effects of selfconsistency in the $GW$ self-energy are analysed. It is shown that the use of a gKS scheme as a starting point for a perturbative QP correction can improve upon the deficiencies found for LDA or GGA staring points for compounds with shallow $d$ bands. For these solids, the order of the valence and conduction bands is often inverted using local or semi-local approximations for XC, which makes perturbative $G_0W_0$ calculations unreliable. The use of a gKS starting point allows for the calculation of fairly accurate band gaps even in these difficult cases, and generally single-shot $G_0W_0$ calculations following calculations using the HSE03 functional are very close to experiment.

We calculate the dynamic structure factor S(k,omega) of liquid Ge (l-Ge) at temperature T = 1250 K, and of amorphous Ge (a-Ge) at T = 300 K, using ab initio molecular dynamics. The electronic energy is computed using density-functional theory, primarily in the generalized gradient approximation, together with a plane wave representation of the wave functions and ultra-soft pseudopotentials. We use a 64-atom cell with periodic boundary conditions, and calculate averages over runs of up to 16 ps. The calculated liquid S(k,omega) agrees qualitatively with that obtained by Hosokawa et al, using inelastic X-ray scattering. In a-Ge, we find that the calculated S(k,omega) is in qualitative agreement with that obtained experimentally by Maley et al. Our results suggest that the ab initio approach is sufficient to allow approximate calculations of S(k,omega) in both liquid and amorphous materials., Comment: 31 pages and 8 figures. Accepted for Phys. Rev. B

First-principles molecular dynamics simulations based on density-functional theory and the projector augmented wave (PAW) technique have been used to study the structural and dynamical properties of liquid iron under Earth's core conditions. As evidence for the accuracy of the techniques, we present PAW results for a range of solid-state properties of low- and high-pressure iron, and compare them with experimental values and the results of other first-principles calculations. In the liquid-state simulations, we address particular effort to the study of finite-size effects, Brillouin-zone sampling and other sources of technical error. Results for the radial distribution function, the diffusion coefficient and the shear viscosity are presented for a wide range of thermodynamic states relevant to the Earth's core. Throughout this range, liquid iron is a close-packed simple liquid with a diffusion coefficient and viscosity similar to those of typical simple liquids under ambient conditions., Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures

We propose a di-interstitial model for the P6 center commonly observed in ion implanted silicon. The di-interstitial structure and transition paths between different defect orientations can explain the thermally activated transition of the P6 center from low-temperature C1h to room-temperature D2d symmetry. The activation energy for the defect reorientation determined by ab initio calculations is 0.5 eV in agreement with the experiment. Our di-interstitial model establishes a link between point defects and extended defects, di-interstitials providing the nuclei for the growth., Comment: 12 pages, REVTeX, Four figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett