Tempering stochastic density functional theory

Minh Nguyen, Wenfei Li, Yangtao Li, Eran Rabani, Roi Baer, Daniel Neuhauser

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

We introduce a tempering approach with stochastic density functional theory (sDFT), labeled t-sDFT, which reduces the statistical errors in the estimates of observable expectation values. This is achieved by rewriting the electronic density as a sum of a "warm"component complemented by "colder"correction(s). Since the warm component is larger in magnitude but faster to evaluate, we use many more stochastic orbitals for its evaluation than for the smaller-sized colder correction(s). This results in a significant reduction in the statistical fluctuations and systematic deviation compared to sDFT for the same computational effort. We demonstrate the method's performance on large hydrogen-passivated silicon nanocrystals, finding a reduction in the systematic deviation in the energy by more than an order of magnitude, while the systematic deviation in the forces is also quenched. Similarly, the statistical fluctuations are reduced by factors of ≈4-5 for the total energy and ≈1.5-2 for the forces on the atoms. Since the embedding in t-sDFT is fully stochastic, it is possible to combine t-sDFT with other variants of sDFT such as energy-window sDFT and embedded-fragmented sDFT.

Original languageEnglish
Article number204105
JournalJournal of Chemical Physics
Volume155
Issue number20
DOIs
StatePublished - 7 Nov 2021

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General Physics and Astronomy
  • Physical and Theoretical Chemistry

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Tempering stochastic density functional theory'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this