Efficient and accurate linear algebraic methods for large-scale electronic structure calculations with nonorthogonal atomic orbitals

Abstract

The need for large-scale electronic structure calculations arises recently in the field of material physics, and efficient and accurate algebraic methods for large simultaneous linear equations become greatly important. We investigate the generalized shifted conjugate orthogonal conjugate gradient method, the generalized Lanczos method, and the generalized Arnoldi method. They are the solver methods of large simultaneous linear equations of the one-electron Schr\"odinger equation and map the whole Hilbert space to a small subspace called the Krylov subspace. These methods are applied to systems of fcc Au with the NRL tight-binding Hamiltonian [F. Kirchhoff et al., Phys. Rev. B 63, 195101 (2001)]. We compare results by these methods and the exact calculation and show them to be equally accurate. The system size dependence of the CPU time is also discussed. The generalized Lanczos method and the generalized Arnoldi method are the most suitable for the large-scale molecular dynamics simulations from the viewpoint of CPU time and memory size.