Koopmans-compliant Functionals Research Articles

Bloch's theorem in orbital-density-dependent functionals: Band structures from Koopmans spectral functionals

Koopmans-compliant functionals provide an orbital-density-dependent framework for an accurate evaluation of spectral properties; they are obtained by imposing a generalized piecewise-linearity condition on the total energy of the system with respect to the occupation of any orbital. In crystalline materials, due to the orbital-density-dependent nature of the functionals, minimization of the total energy to a ground state provides a set of minimizing variational orbitals that are localized and thus break the periodicity of the underlying lattice. Despite this, we show that Bloch symmetry can be preserved and it is possible to describe the electronic states with a band-structure picture, thanks to the Wannier-like character of the variational orbitals. We also present a method to unfold and interpolate the electronic bands from supercell ($\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Gamma}}$-point) calculations, which enables us to calculate full band structures with Koopmans-compliant functionals. The results obtained for a set of benchmark semiconductors and insulators show very good agreement with state-of-the-art many-body perturbation theory and experiments, underscoring the reliability of these spectral functionals in predicting band structures.

Electronic Structure of Water from Koopmans-Compliant Functionals.

Obtaining a precise theoretical description of the spectral properties of liquid water poses challenges for both molecular dynamics (MD) and electronic structure methods. The lower computational cost of the Koopmans-compliant functionals with respect to Green's function methods allows the simulations of many MD trajectories, with a description close to the state-of-art quasi-particle self-consistent GW plus vertex corrections method (QSGW + fxc). Thus, we explore water spectral properties when different MD approaches are used, ranging from classical MD to first-principles MD, and including nuclear quantum effects. We have observed that different MD approaches lead to up to 1 eV change in the average band gap; thus, we focused on the band gap dependence with the geometrical properties of a system to explain such spread. We have evaluated the changes in the band gap due to variations in the intramolecular O-H bond distance and HOH angle, as well as the intermolecular hydrogen bond O···O distance and the OHO angles. We have observed that the dominant contribution comes from the O-H bond length; the O···O distance plays a secondary role, and the other geometrical properties do not significantly influence the gap. Furthermore, we analyze the electronic density of states (DOS), where the KIPZ functional shows good agreement with the DOS obtained with state-of-art approaches employing quasi-particle self-consistent GW plus vertex corrections. The O-H bond length also significantly influences the DOS. When nuclear quantum effects are considered, broadening of the peaks driven by the broader distribution of the O-H bond lengths is observed, leading to a closer agreement with the experimental photoemission spectra.

Koopmans Meets Bethe-Salpeter: Excitonic Optical Spectra without GW.

The Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE) can be applied to compute from first-principles optical spectra that include the effects of screened electron-hole interactions. As input, BSE calculations require single-particle states, quasiparticle energy levels, and the screened Coulomb interaction, which are typically obtained with many-body perturbation theory, whose cost limits the scope of possible applications. This work tries to address this practical limitation, instead deriving spectral energies from Koopmans-compliant functionals and introducing a new methodology for handling the screened Coulomb interaction. The explicit calculation of the W matrix is bypassed via a direct minimization scheme applied on top of a maximally localized Wannier function basis. We validate and benchmark this approach by computing the low-lying excited states of the molecules in Thiel's set and the optical absorption spectrum of a C60 fullerene. The results show the same trends as quantum chemical methods and are in excellent agreement with previous simulations carried out at the time-dependent density functional theory or G0 W0-BSE level. Conveniently, the new framework reduces the parameter space controlling the accuracy of the calculation, thereby simplifying the simulation of charge-neutral excitations, offering the potential to expand the applicability of first-principles spectroscopies to larger systems of applied interest.

Koopmans-Compliant Functionals and Potentials and Their Application to the GW100 Test Set

Koopmans-compliant (KC) functionals have been shown to provide accurate spectral properties through a generalized condition of piecewise linearity of the total energy as a function of the fractional addition/removal of an electron to/from any orbital. We analyze the performance of different KC functionals on a large and standardized set of 100 molecules, the GW100 test set, comparing vertical ionization potentials (taken as opposite of the orbital energies) to those obtained from accurate quantum chemistry methods, and to experimental results. We find excellent agreement, with a mean absolute error of 0.20 eV for the KIPZ functional on the first ionization potential, which is state-of-the-art for both density functional theory (DFT)-based calculations and many-body perturbation theory. We highlight similarities and differences between KC functionals and other electronic-structure approaches, such as dielectric-dependent hybrid functionals and Green's function methods, both from a theoretical and from a practical point of view, arguing that KC potentials can be considered as local and orbital-dependent approximations to the electronic self-energy, already including approximate vertex corrections.

First-Principles Photoemission Spectroscopy of DNA and RNA Nucleobases from Koopmans-Compliant Functionals.

The need to interpret ultraviolet photoemission data strongly motivates the refinement of first-principles techniques that are able to accurately predict spectral properties. In this work, we employ Koopmans-compliant functionals, constructed to enforce piecewise linearity in approximate density functionals, to calculate the structural and electronic properties of DNA and RNA nucleobases. Our results show that not only ionization potentials and electron affinities are accurately predicted with mean absolute errors of <0.1 eV, but also that calculated photoemission spectra are in excellent agreement with experimental ultraviolet photoemission spectra. In particular, the role and contribution of different tautomers to the photoemission spectra are highlighted and discussed in detail. The structural properties of nucleobases are also investigated, showing an improved description with respect to local and semilocal density-functional theory. Methodologically, our results further consolidate the role of Koopmans-compliant functionals in providing, through orbital-density-dependent potentials, accurate electronic and spectral properties.

First-principles photoemission spectroscopy and orbital tomography in molecules from koopmans-compliant functionals.

The determination of spectral properties from first principles can provide powerful connections between microscopic theoretical predictions and experimental data, but requires complex electronic-structure formulations that fall outside the domain of applicability of common approaches, such as density-functional theory. We show here that Koopmans-compliant functionals, constructed to enforce piecewise linearity and the correct discontinuity derivative in energy functionals with respect to fractional occupation-i.e., with respect to charged excitations-provide molecular photoemission spectra and momentum maps of Dyson orbitals that are in excellent agreement with experimental ultraviolet photoemission spectroscopy and orbital tomography data. These results highlight the role of Koopmans-compliant functionals as accurate and inexpensive quasiparticle approximations to the spectral potential.

Variational minimization of orbital-density-dependent functionals

Orbital-density-dependent functionals, such as the Perdew-Zunger or the Koopmans-compliant functionals, are used to remove unphysical self-interaction energies and to restoremissing piece-wise linearity in approximate formulations of density-functional theory (DFT). At variance with functionals of the total density, orbital-density-dependent functionals are typically not invariant with respect to unitary transformations of the occupied states. Such additional degrees of freedom require an extension of established approaches for direct minimization that preserve their numerical robustness and efficiency, and make it possible to apply these advanced electronic-structure functionals to large or complex systems. In this work we adapt the ensemble-DFT algorithm [N. Marzari, D. Vanderbilt, and M. C. Payne, Phys. Rev. Lett. 79, 1337 (1997)] to the case of orbital-density-dependent functionals, partitioning the variational problem into a nested loop of (i) minimizations with respect to unitary transformations at a fixed orbital manifold, that lead to a projected, unitary-covariant functional of the orbitals only that enforces the Pederson condition and (ii) variational optimization of the orbital manifold for this projected functional. We discuss in detail both general and functional-dependent trends and suggest a procedure to efficiently exploit the combination of the different minimization strategies. The overall formulation allows for a stable, robust, and efficient algorithm, yielding great improvements over conventional techniques.

Koopmans-compliant functionals and their performance against reference molecular data

Koopmans-compliant functionals emerge naturally from extending the constraint of piecewise linearity of the total energy as a function of the number of electrons to each fractional orbital occupation. When applied to approximate density-functional theory, these corrections give rise to orbital-density-dependent functionals and potentials. We show that the simplest implementations of Koopmans' compliance provide accurate estimates for the quasiparticle excitations and leave the total energy functional almost or exactly intact, i.e., they describe correctly electron removals or additions, but do not necessarily alter the electronic charge density distribution within the system. Additional functionals can then be constructed that modify the potential energy surface, including e.g. Perdew-Zunger corrections. These functionals become exactly one-electron self-interaction free and, as all Koopmans-compliant functionals, are approximately many-electron self-interaction free. We discuss in detail these different formulations, and provide extensive benchmarks for the 55 molecules in the reference G2-1 set, using Koopmans-compliant functionals constructed from local-density or generalized-gradient approximations. In all cases we find excellent performance in the electronic properties, comparable or improved with respect to that of many-body perturbation theories, such as G$_0$W$_0$ and self-consistent GW, at a fraction of the cost and in a variational framework that also delivers energy derivatives. Structural properties and atomization energies preserve or slightly improve the accuracy of the underlying density-functional approximations (Note: Supplemental Material is included in the source).

Bridging density-functional and many-body perturbation theory: Orbital-density dependence in electronic-structure functionals

Energy functionals which depend explicitly on orbital densities, rather than on the total charge density, appear when applying self-interaction corrections to density-functional theory; this is, e.g., the case for Perdew-Zunger and Koopmans-compliant functionals. In these formulations the total energy is not invariant under unitary rotations of the orbitals, and local, orbital-dependent potentials emerge. We argue that this is not a shortcoming, and that instead these potentials can provide, in a functional form, a simplified quasiparticle approximation to the spectral potential, i.e., the local, frequency-dependent contraction of the many-body self-energy that is sufficient to describe exactly the spectral function. As such, orbital-density-dependent functionals have the flexibility to accurately describe both total energies and quasiparticle excitations in the electronic-structure problem. In addition, and at variance with the Kohn-Sham case, orbital-dependent potentials do not require nonanalytic derivative discontinuities. We present numerical solutions based on the frequency-dependent Sham-Schl\"uter equation to support this view, and examine some of the existing functionals in this perspective, highlighting the very close agreement between exact and approximate orbital-dependent potentials.