Deyu Lu

Ab initio calculations of optical absorption spectra: Solution of the Bethe–Salpeter equation within density matrix perturbation theory

We describe an ab initio approach to compute the optical absorption spectra of molecules and solids, which is suitable for the study of large systems and gives access to spectra within a wide energy range. In this approach, the quantum Liouville equation is solved iteratively within first order perturbation theory, with a Hamiltonian containing a static self-energy operator. This procedure is equivalent to solving the statically screened Bethe-Salpeter equation. Explicit calculations of single particle excited states and inversion of dielectric matrices are avoided using techniques based on density functional perturbation theory. In this way, full absorption spectra may be obtained with a computational workload comparable to ground state Hartree-Fock calculations. We present results for small molecules, for the spectra of a 1 nm Si cluster in a wide energy range (20 eV), and for a dipeptide exhibiting charge transfer excitations.

Van der waals interactions in molecular assemblies from first-principles calculations.

We investigated intermolecular interactions in weakly bonded molecular assemblies from first principles, by combining exact exchange energies (EXX) with correlation energies defined by the adiabatic connection fluctuation-dissipation theorem, within the random phase approximation (RPA). We considered three different types of molecular systems: the benzene crystal, the methane crystal, and self-assembled monolayers of phenylenediisocyanide, which involve aromatic rings, sp(3)-hybridized C-H bonds, and isocyanide triple bonds, respectively. We describe in detail how computed equilibrium lattice constants and cohesive energies may be affected by the input ground state wave functions and orbital energies, by the geometries of molecular monomers in the assemblies, and by the inclusion of zero-point energy contribution to the total energy. We find that the EXX/RPA perturbative approach provides an overall satisfactory, first-principles description of dispersion forces. However, binding energies tend to be underestimated, and possible reasons for this discrepancy are discussed.

Power series expansion of the random phase approximation correlation energy: The role of the third- and higher-order contributions.

We derive a power expansion of the correlation energy of weakly bound systems within the random phase approximation (RPA), in terms of the Coulomb interaction operator, and we show that the asymptotic limit of the second- and third-order terms yields the van der Waals (vdW) dispersion energy terms derived by Zaremba-Kohn and Axilrod-Teller within perturbation theory. We then show that the use of the second-order expansion of the RPA correlation energy results in rather inaccurate binding energy curves for weakly bonded systems, and discuss the implications of our findings for the development of approximate vdW density functionals. We also assess the accuracy of different exchange energy functionals used in the derivation of vdW density functionals.

Calculation of Quasi-Particle Energies of Aromatic Self-Assembled Monolayers on Au(111)

We present many-body perturbation theory calculations of the electronic properties of phenylene diisocyanide self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) on a gold surface. Using structural models obtained within density functional theory (DFT), we have investigated how the SAM molecular energies are modified by self-energy corrections and how they are affected by the presence of the surface. We have employed a combination of GW (G = Greens function; W = screened Coulomb interaction) calculations of the SAM quasi-particle energies and a semiclassical image potential model to account for surface polarization effects. We find that it is essential to include both quasi-particle corrections and surface screening in order to provide a reasonable estimate of the energy level alignment at a SAM-metal interface. In particular, our results show that within the GW approximation the energy distance between phenylene diisocyanide SAM energy levels and the gold surface Fermi level is much larger than that found within DFT, e.g., more than double in the case of low packing densities of the SAM.