Current Ideas and Methods for Calculation of Ground State Properties of Solids

Abstract

The purpose of my contribution to this NATO Institute is to provide background for understanding the progress that has been made recently in the field of calculation of the properties of solids in their electronic ground state. I will attempt to give my perspective on the fundamental concepts, the most significant steps in the development of current methods, important results of calculations, and directions for future research. Although this is not meant to be a comprehensive review, I will attempt to describe the breadth of current work, giving examples of diverse methods and applications. This paper is organized to discuss the basic many-body problem in Section II, the techniques for ab initio solutions in Sections in Sections Ill and IV, and results of calculations in Section V. The notation and perspective that is presented here builds upon the published work by D.J. Chadi, H. Wendel, K. Kunc, O. H. Nielsen, and myself.1–11 Other papers in this proceedings by Kunc12 and Nielsen13 will present further insights into the general theory and specific results.