63 research outputs found
Periodic Pulay method for robust and efficient convergence acceleration of self-consistent field iterations
Pulay's Direct Inversion in the Iterative Subspace (DIIS) method is one of
the most widely used mixing schemes for accelerating the self-consistent
solution of electronic structure problems. In this work, we propose a simple
generalization of DIIS in which Pulay extrapolation is performed at periodic
intervals rather than on every self-consistent field iteration, and linear
mixing is performed on all other iterations. We demonstrate through numerical
tests on a wide variety of materials systems in the framework of density
functional theory that the proposed generalization of Pulay's method
significantly improves its robustness and efficiency.Comment: Version 2 (with minor edits from version 1
Hybrid preconditioning for iterative diagonalization of ill-conditioned generalized eigenvalue problems in electronic structure calculations
The iterative diagonalization of a sequence of large ill-conditioned
generalized eigenvalue problems is a computational bottleneck in quantum
mechanical methods employing a nonorthogonal basis for {\em ab initio}
electronic structure calculations. We propose a hybrid preconditioning scheme
to effectively combine global and locally accelerated preconditioners for rapid
iterative diagonalization of such eigenvalue problems. In partition-of-unity
finite-element (PUFE) pseudopotential density-functional calculations,
employing a nonorthogonal basis, we show that the hybrid preconditioned block
steepest descent method is a cost-effective eigensolver, outperforming current
state-of-the-art global preconditioning schemes, and comparably efficient for
the ill-conditioned generalized eigenvalue problems produced by PUFE as the
locally optimal block preconditioned conjugate-gradient method for the
well-conditioned standard eigenvalue problems produced by planewave methods
Two-level Chebyshev filter based complementary subspace method: pushing the envelope of large-scale electronic structure calculations
We describe a novel iterative strategy for Kohn-Sham density functional
theory calculations aimed at large systems (> 1000 electrons), applicable to
metals and insulators alike. In lieu of explicit diagonalization of the
Kohn-Sham Hamiltonian on every self-consistent field (SCF) iteration, we employ
a two-level Chebyshev polynomial filter based complementary subspace strategy
to: 1) compute a set of vectors that span the occupied subspace of the
Hamiltonian; 2) reduce subspace diagonalization to just partially occupied
states; and 3) obtain those states in an efficient, scalable manner via an
inner Chebyshev-filter iteration. By reducing the necessary computation to just
partially occupied states, and obtaining these through an inner Chebyshev
iteration, our approach reduces the cost of large metallic calculations
significantly, while eliminating subspace diagonalization for insulating
systems altogether. We describe the implementation of the method within the
framework of the Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) electronic structure method and
show that this results in a computational scheme that can effectively tackle
bulk and nano systems containing tens of thousands of electrons, with chemical
accuracy, within a few minutes or less of wall clock time per SCF iteration on
large-scale computing platforms. We anticipate that our method will be
instrumental in pushing the envelope of large-scale ab initio molecular
dynamics. As a demonstration of this, we simulate a bulk silicon system
containing 8,000 atoms at finite temperature, and obtain an average SCF step
wall time of 51 seconds on 34,560 processors; thus allowing us to carry out 1.0
ps of ab initio molecular dynamics in approximately 28 hours (of wall time).Comment: Resubmitted version (version 2
Accuracy of Kohn-Sham density functional theory for warm- and hot-dense matter equation of state
We study the accuracy of Kohn-Sham density functional theory (DFT) for warm-
and hot-dense matter (WDM and HDM). Specifically, considering a wide range of
systems, we perform accurate ab initio molecular dynamics simulations with
temperature-independent local/semilocal density functionals to determine the
equations of state at compression ratios of 3x--7x and temperatures near 1 MK.
We find very good agreement with path integral Monte Carlo (PIMC) benchmarks,
while having significantly smaller error bars and smoother data, demonstrating
the fidelity of DFT for the study of WDM and HDM.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, 1 tabl
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