Convergence analysis of direct minimization and self-consistent iterations

Abstract: We prove the existence of solutions of the reduced Hartree-Fock equations at finite temperature for a periodic crystal with a small defect, and show total screening of the defect charge by the electrons. We also show the convergence of the damped self-consistent field iteration using Kerker preconditioning to remove charge sloshing. As a crucial step of the proof, we define and study the properties of the dielectric operator.

Abstract: We propose to use the Łojasiewicz inequality as a general tool for analyzing the convergence rate of gradient descent on a Hilbert manifold, without resorting to the continuous gradient flow. Using this tool, we show that a Sobolev gradient descent method with adaptive inner product converges exponentially fast to the ground state for the Gross-Pitaevskii eigenproblem. This method can be extended to a class of general high-degree optimizations or nonlinear eigenproblems under certain conditions. We demonstrate this generalization by several examples, in particular a nonlinear Schrodinger eigenproblem with an extra high-order interaction term. Numerical experiments are presented for these problems.

Abstract: Density-functional theory (DFT) is a widespread method for simulating the quantum-chemical behaviour of electrons in matter. It provides a first-principles description of many optical, mechanical and chemical properties at an acceptable computational cost [16, 2, 3]. For a wide range of systems the obtained predictions are accurate and shortcomings of the theory are by now wellunderstood [2, 3]. The desire to tackle even bigger systems and more involved materials, however, keeps posing novel challenges that require methods to constantly improve. One example are socalled high-throughput screening approaches, which are becoming prominent in recent years. In these techniques one wishes to systematically scan over huge design spaces of compounds in order to identify promising novel materials for targeted follow-up investigation. This has already lead to many success stories [14], such as the discovery of novel earth-abundant semiconductors [11], novel light-absorbing materials [20], electrocatalysts [8], materials for hydrogen storage [13] or for Li-ion batteries [1]. Keeping in mind the large range of physics that needs to be covered in these studies as well as the typical number of calculations (up to the order of millions), a bottleneck in these studies is the reliability and performance of the underlying DFT codes.

Abstract: We study and derive algorithms for nonlinear eigenvalue problems, where the system matrix depends on the eigenvector, or several eigenvectors (or their corresponding invariant subspace). The algorithms are derived from an implicit viewpoint. More precisely, we change the Newton update equation in a way that the next iterate does not only appear linearly in the update equation. Although the modifications of the update equation make the methods implicit, we show how corresponding iterates can be computed explicitly. Therefore, we can carry out steps of the implicit method using explicit procedures. In several cases, these procedures involve a solution of standard eigenvalue problems. We propose two modifications, one of the modifications leads directly to a well-established method (the self-consistent field iteration) whereas the other method is to our knowledge new and has several attractive properties. Convergence theory is provided along with several simulations which illustrate the properties of the algorithms.

Abstract: We propose accurate computable error bounds for quantities of interest in electronic structure calculations, in particular ground-state density matrices and energies, and interatomic forces. These bounds are based on an estimation of the error in terms of the residual of the solved equations, which is then efficiently approximated with computable terms. After providing coarse bounds based on an analysis of the inverse Jacobian, we improve on these bounds by solving a linear problem in a small dimension that involves a Schur complement. We numerically show how accurate these bounds are on a few representative materials, namely silicon, gallium arsenide and titanium dioxide.

Abstract: We present an efficient scheme for calculating the Kohn-Sham ground state of metallic systems using pseudopotentials and a plane-wave basis set. In the first part the application of Pulay's DIIS method (direct inversion in the iterative subspace) to the iterative diagonalization of large matrices will be discussed. Our approach is stable, reliable, and minimizes the number of order ${\mathit{N}}_{\mathrm{atoms}}^{3}$ operations. In the second part, we will discuss an efficient mixing scheme also based on Pulay's scheme. A special ``metric'' and a special ``preconditioning'' optimized for a plane-wave basis set will be introduced. Scaling of the method will be discussed in detail for non-self-consistent and self-consistent calculations. It will be shown that the number of iterations required to obtain a specific precision is almost independent of the system size. Altogether an order ${\mathit{N}}_{\mathrm{atoms}}^{2}$ scaling is found for systems containing up to 1000 electrons. If we take into account that the number of k points can be decreased linearly with the system size, the overall scaling can approach ${\mathit{N}}_{\mathrm{atoms}}$. We have implemented these algorithms within a powerful package called VASP (Vienna ab initio simulation package). The program and the techniques have been used successfully for a large number of different systems (liquid and amorphous semiconductors, liquid simple and transition metals, metallic and semiconducting surfaces, phonons in simple metals, transition metals, and semiconductors) and turned out to be very reliable. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.

Abstract: From a theory of Hohenberg and Kohn, approximation methods for treating an inhomogeneous system of interacting electrons are developed. These methods are exact for systems of slowly varying or high density. For the ground state, they lead to self-consistent equations analogous to the Hartree and Hartree-Fock equations, respectively. In these equations the exchange and correlation portions of the chemical potential of a uniform electron gas appear as additional effective potentials. (The exchange portion of our effective potential differs from that due to Slater by a factor of $\frac{2}{3}$.) Electronic systems at finite temperatures and in magnetic fields are also treated by similar methods. An appendix deals with a further correction for systems with short-wavelength density oscillations.

Abstract: We present pseudopotential coefficients for the first two rows of the Periodic Table. The pseudopotential is of an analytic form that gives optimal efficiency in numerical calculations using plane waves as a basis set. At most, seven coefficients are necessary to specify its analytic form. It is separable and has optimal decay properties in both real and Fourier space. Because of this property, the application of the nonlocal part of the pseudopotential to a wave function can be done efficiently on a grid in real space. Real space integration is much faster for large systems than ordinary multiplication in Fourier space, since it shows only quadratic scaling with respect to the size of the system. We systematically verify the high accuracy of these pseudopotentials by extensive atomic and molecular test calculations. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.

Abstract: In this paper we develop new Newton and conjugate gradient algorithms on the Grassmann and Stiefel manifolds. These manifolds represent the constraints that arise in such areas as the symmetric eigenvalue problem, nonlinear eigenvalue problems, electronic structures computations, and signal processing. In addition to the new algorithms, we show how the geometrical framework gives penetrating new insights allowing us to create, understand, and compare algorithms. The theory proposed here provides a taxonomy for numerical linear algebra algorithms that provide a top level mathematical view of previously unrelated algorithms. It is our hope that developers of new algorithms and perturbation theories will benefit from the theory, methods, and examples in this paper.