Study on the maximum accuracy of the pseudopotential density functional method with localized atomic orbitals versus plane-wave basis sets

O(N) methods in electronic structure calculations

Linear-scaling methods, or O(N) methods, have computational and memory requirements which scale linearly with the number of atoms in the system, N, in contrast to standard approaches which scale with the cube of the number of atoms. These methods, which rely on the short-ranged nature of electronic structure, will allow accurate, ab initio simulations of systems of unprecedented size. The theory behind the locality of electronic structure is described and related to physical properties of systems to be modelled, along with a survey of recent developments in real-space methods which are important for efficient use of high-performance computers. The linear-scaling methods proposed to date can be divided into seven different areas, and the applicability, efficiency and advantages of the methods proposed in these areas are then discussed. The applications of linear-scaling methods, as well as the implementations available as computer programs, are considered. Finally, the prospects for and the challenges facing linear-scaling methods are discussed.

Systematically improvable optimized atomic basis sets for ab initio calculations

We propose a unique scheme to construct fully optimized atomic basis sets for density-functional calculations. The shapes of the radial functions are optimized by minimizing the spillage of the wavefunctions between the atomic orbital calculations and the converged plane wave results for dimer systems. The quality of the bases can be systematically improved by increasing the size of the bases within the same framework. We show that the spillage can describe the convergency of the total energy very well and the cutoff radii of the atomic orbitals are extremely important for the quality of the atomic orbitals. The scheme is easy to implement and very flexible. We have performed extensive tests of this scheme for a wide variety of systems, including semiconductors, oxides, metals, clusters, etc. The results show that the obtained atomic bases are very satisfactory for both accuracy and transferability.