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Development of the self-consistent approximation and its application to the problem of magnetoelastic resonance in an inhomogeneous medium

Our previously proposed approximation involving both the first and second terms of the expansion of the vertex function is generalized to the system of two interacting wavefields of different physical nature. A system of self-consistent equations for the matrix Green’s function and matrix vertex function is derived. On the basis of this matrix generalization of the new self-consistent approximation, a theory of magnetoelastic resonance is developed for a ferromagnetic model, where the magnetoelastic coupling parameter ε(x) is inhomogeneous. Equations for magnetoelastic resonance are analyzed for one-dimensional inhomogeneities of the coupling parameter. The diagonal and off-diagonal elements of the matrix Green’s function of the system of coupled spin and elastic waves are calculated with the change in the ratio between the average value ε and rms fluctuation Δε of the coupling parameter between waves from the homogeneous case (ε ≠ 0, Δε = 0) to the extremely randomized case (ε = 0, Δε ≠ 0) at various correlation wavenumbers of inhomogeneities k{sub c}. For the limiting case of infinite correlation radius (k{sub c} = 0), in addition to approximate expressions, exact analytical expressions corresponding to the summation of all diagrams of elements of the matrix Green’s function are obtained. The results calculated for an arbitrary k{sub c} value in the new self-consistent approximation are compared to the results obtained in the standard self-consistent approximation, where only the first term of the expansion of the vertex function is taken into account. It is shown that the new approximation corrects disadvantages of the Green’s functions calculated in the standard approximation such as the dome shape of resonances and bends on the sides of resonance peaks. The appearance of a fine structure of the spectrum in the form of a narrow resonance on the Green’s function of spin waves and a narrow antiresonance on the Green’s function of elastic waves, which was previously predicted in the standard self-consistent approximation, is confirmed. With an increase in the parameter k{sub c}, the Green’s functions calculated in the standard and new approximations approach each other and almost coincide with each other at k{sub c}/k ≥ 0.5. At the same time, the results of this work indicate that the new self-consistent approximation has a certain advantage for studying the problems of stochastic radiophysics in media with long-wavelength inhomogeneities (small k{sub c} values), because it describes both the shape and width of peaks much better than the standard approximation.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Efficient sampling of free energy landscapes with functions in Sobolev spaces

Molecular simulations of biological and physical phenomena generally involve sampling complicated, rough energy landscapes characterized by multiple local minima. In this work, we introduce a new family of methods for advanced sampling that draw inspiration from functional representations used in machine learning and approximation theory. As shown here, such representations are particularly well suited for learning free energies using artificial neural networks. As a system evolves through phase space, the proposed methods gradually build a model for the free energy as a function of one or more collective variables, from both the frequency of visits to distinct states and generalized force estimates corresponding to such states. Implementation of the methods is relatively simple and, more importantly, for the representative examples considered in this work, they provide computational efficiency gains of up to several orders of magnitude over other widely used simulation techniques.

Approximation theory↗

Effects of Co Doping and Point Defect on the Ferromagnetism of ZnO

The effects of different doping proportions of Co doping and oxygen vacancies (V{sub O}) on the ferromagnetism of zinc oxide (ZnO) are controversial. To solve this problem, we investigated the effects of Co doping and point defects (V{sub O}, V{sub Zn}, H{sub i}, and Zn{sub i}) on the ferromagnetism of ZnO through first-principle calculations by using generalized gradient approximation + U (GGA + U) under density functional theory. Results show that the closer the distance between Co and vacancies (V{sub O} or V{sub Zn}), the lower the formation energy and the more stable the system will be. Co-doped ZnO with V{sub O} or V{sub Zn} exhibits long-range ordered ferromagnetism and Curie temperature above the room temperature. Especially, Co-doped ZnO with V{sub Zn} shows a half-metallic behavior, resulting in 100% conduction hole polarizability, which is highly beneficial for dilute magnetic semiconductors (DMSs) as a hole injection source. The ferromagnetism of Zn{sub 14}CoO{sub 16} is caused by the double exchange effects among the electrons of the O–2p, Co–3d, and Zn–3d orbits mediated by the hole carriers after complexes were formed by the Co doping and Zn vacancy. Similarly, the origin of ferromagnetism in Zn{sub 15}CoO{sub 15} is derived from the double exchange effects among the electrons of O–2p, Co–3d, and Zn–4s states mediated by the electron carriers after complexes were formed by the Co doping and O vacancy. In addition, the result shows that Co-doped ZnO with interstitial H (H{sub i}) or Zn (Zn{sub i}) is unfavorable for ferromagnetism and should be avoided experimentally.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Meta-GGA exchange-correlation free energy density functional to increase the accuracy of warm dense matter simulations

We discuss strategies for thermalization of the ground-state meta-generalized gradient approximation (meta-GGA) exchange-correlation (XC) functionals. A simple but accurate scheme is implemented via universal additive thermal correction to XC using a perturbative-like self-consistent approach. The additive correction with explicit temperature dependence is applied to the ground-state deorbitalized, strongly constrained and appropriately normed (SCAN-L) meta-GGA XC leading to thermal XC functional denoted here as T-SCAN-L. Thermal T-SCAN-L meta-GGA functional shows significant improvement in density functional theory calculation accuracy for warm dense matter by a factor of 3 to 10, achieving unprecedented accuracy of total pressure between a few tenths and 1% when compared to traditional XC functionals, as demonstrated by the comparison to pathintegral Monte Carlo simulations for helium equation of state. Furthermore, the T-SCAN-L calculations of dc conductivity of warm dense aluminum also give better agreement with experiments over other XC functionals such as PBE and SCAN-L.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

An Empirical Fitting Method for Type Ia Supernova Light Curves: A Case Study of SN 2011fe

We present a new empirical fitting method for the optical light curves of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia). We find that a variant broken-power-law function provides a good fit, with the simple assumption that the optical emission is approximately the blackbody emission of the expanding fireball. This function is mathematically analytic and is derived directly from the photospheric velocity evolution. When deriving the function, we assume that both the blackbody temperature and photospheric velocity are constant, but the final function is able to accommodate these changes during the fitting procedure. Applying it to the case study of SN 2011fe gives a surprisingly good fit that can describe the light curves from the first-light time to a few weeks after peak brightness, as well as over a large range of fluxes (∼5 mag, and even ∼7 mag in the g band). Since SNe Ia share similar light-curve shapes, this fitting method has the potential to fit most other SNe Ia and characterize their properties in large statistical samples such as those already gathered and in the near future as new facilities become available.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

The LISE package: solvers for static and time-dependent superfluid local density approximation equations in three dimensions

Nuclear implementation of the density functional theory (DFT) is at present the only microscopic framework applicable to the whole nuclear landscape. The extension of DFT to superfluid systems in the spirit of the Kohn-Sham approach, the superfluid local density approximation (SLDA) and its extension to time-dependent situations, time-dependent superfluid local density ap- proximation (TDSLDA), have been extensively used to describe various static and dynamical problems in nuclear physics, neutron star crust, and cold atom systems. In this paper, we present the codes that solve the static and time-dependent SLDA equations in three-dimensional coordinate space without any symmetry restriction. These codes are fully parallelized with the message passing interface (MPI) library and take advantage of graphic processing units (GPU) for accelerating execution. The dynamic codes have checkpoint/restart capabilities and for initial conditions one can use any generalized Slater determinant type of wave function. The code can describe a large number of physical problems: nuclear fission, collisions of heavy ions, the interaction of quantized vor- tices with nuclei in the nuclear star crust, excitation of superfluid fermion systems by time dependent external fields, quantum shock waves, domain wall generation and propagation, the dynamics of the Anderson-Bogoliubov-Higgs mode, dynamics of fragmented condensates, vortex rings dynamics, generation and dynamics of quantized vortices, their crossing and recombinations and the incipient phases of quantum turbulence.

Jin, Shi↗

Crystal-momentum-resolved contributions to high-order harmonic generation in solids

We analytically and numerically investigate the emission of high-order harmonic radiation from model solids by intense few-cycle midinfrared laser pulses. In single-active-electron approximation, we expand the active electron's wave function in a basis of adiabatic Houston states and describe the solid's electronic band structure in terms of an adjustable Kronig-Penney model potential. For high-order harmonic generation (HHG) from MgO crystals, we examine spectra from two-band and converged multiband numerical calculations. We discuss the characteristics of intra- and interband contributions to the HHG spectrum for computations including initial crystal momenta either from the Γ point at the center of the first Brioullin zone (BZ) only or from the entire first BZ. For sufficiently high intensities of the driving laser field, we find relevant contributions to HHG from the entire first BZ. Here, based on numerically calculated spectra, we scrutinize the cutoff harmonic orders as a function of the laser peak intensity and find good qualitative agreement with our analytical saddle-point-approximation predictions and published theoretical data.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Structure formation in the Deser-Woodard nonlocal gravity model: a reappraisal

In this work, we extend previous analyses of the structure formation in the f (□{sup −1} R ) model of nonlocal gravity proposed by Deser and Woodard (DW), which reproduces the background expansion of ΛCDM with no need of a cosmological constant nor of any dimensional constant beside Newton's one. A previous analysis based on redshift-space distortions (RSD) data concluded that the model was ruled out. In this work we revisit the issue and find that, when recast in a localized model, the DW model is not ruled out and actually gives a better fit to RSD data than ΛCDM. In fact, the DW model presents a suppressed growth of matter perturbations with respect to ΛCDM and a slightly lower value of σ{sub 8}, as favored by observations. We also produce analytical approximations of the two modified gravity functions, i.e. the anisotropic stress η and the relative change of Newton's constant Y , and of f σ{sub 8}( z ) as a function of redshift. Finally, we also show how much the fit depends on initial conditions when these are generalized with respect to a standard matter-dominated era.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Predicting impurity spectral functions using machine learning

The Anderson Impurity Model (AIM) is a canonical model of quantum many-body physics. Here we investigate whether machine learning models, both neural networks (NN) and kernel ridge regression (KRR), can accurately predict the AIM spectral function in all of its regimes, from empty orbital, to mixed valence, to Kondo. To tackle this question, we construct two large spectral databases containing approximately 410 000 and 600 000 spectral functions of the single-channel impurity problem. We show that the NN models can accurately predict the AIM spectral function in all of its regimes, with pointwise mean absolute errors down to 0.003 in normalized units. We find that the trained NN models outperform models based on KRR and enjoy a speedup on the order of 10 5 over traditional AIM solvers. Finally, the required size of the training set of our model can be significantly reduced using farthest point sampling in the AIM parameter space, which is important for generalizing our method to more complicated multichannel impurity problems of relevance to predicting the properties of real materials.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Validating first-principles phonon lifetimes via inelastic neutron scattering

Phonon lifetimes are a key component of quasiparticle theories of transport; yet first-principles lifetimes are rarely directly compared with inelastic neutron scattering (INS) results. Existing comparisons show discrepancies even at temperatures where perturbation theory is expected to be reliable. In this paper, we demonstrate that the reciprocal space voxel (q voxel), which is the finite region in reciprocal space required in INS data analysis, must be explicitly accounted for within theory in order to draw a meaningful comparison. Here, we demonstrate accurate predictions of peak widths of the scattering function when accounting for the q voxel in CaF 2 and ThO 2 . Passing this test implies high fidelity of the phonon interactions and the approximations used to compute the Green's function, serving as a critical benchmark of theory and indicating that other material properties should be accurately predicted, which we demonstrate for thermal conductivity.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Prediction of a Dynamically Stable New Half-Metallic Phase for the BaN and BaC Compounds

The structural, magnetic, elastic, mechanical, and thermodynamic properties of BaC and BaN compounds in different phases were studied using first-principle calculations based on spin-polarized density functional theory within the generalized gradient approximation (GGA-PBEsol) and the modified Becke–Johnson approach (mBJ-GGA-PBEsol) for the exchange-correlation energy and potential. The following phases—rock-salt (NaCl), CsCl, zinc blende (ZB), NiAs- and WZ-type hexagonal, tetragonal (P4/nmm), and orthorombic (Pnma) phases of BaC and BaN compounds—were considered. We obtained that Pnma phase has the lowest energy configuration as a function of the volume for both the BaN and BaC compounds. The ferromagnetic phase is energetically favored with respect to the non-magnetic phase in the BaN and BaC compounds, except for the CsCl phase in the BaC compound. Considering the phonon dynamics of BaN and BaC compounds in the Pnma, NaCl, ZB, and WZ phases, we observed that the BaN and BaC compounds in the Pnma, NaCl, and ZB phases are dynamically stable. The calculated elastic properties for the Pnma, NaCl, and ZB phases show that they are elastically stable. The Pnma phase for the BaN and BaC compounds, which is a new phase was found to be dynamically and elastically stable. The BaN and BaC compounds exhibit half-metallic behavior in the Pnma, NaCl, and ZB phases. The half-metallic and magnetic character found in the BaN and BaC compounds are attributed to the presence of spin-polarized 2p orbitals of the nitrogen and carbon atoms, respectively. We found that BaN and BaC compounds are half-metallic ferromagnets with magnetic moment of 1 μ{sub B} and 2 μ{sub B} per formula unit, respectively. Using the GGA-PBEsol (mBJ-GGA-PBEsol) approach, our calculated half-metallic gaps for BaN and BaC compounds are 0.22 eV (0.54 eV) and 0.32 eV (0.44 eV) in the Pnma phase, 0.23 eV (1.32 eV) and 0.35 eV (1.00 eV) in the NaCl phase, and 0.38 eV (1.54 eV) and 0.50 eV (1.57 eV) in the ZB phase, respectively.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

A persistent adjoint method with dynamic time-scaling and an application to mass action kinetics

In this article, we consider an optimization problem where the objective function is evaluated at the fixed-point of a contraction mapping parameterized by a control variable, and optimization takes place over this control variable. Since the derivative of the fixed-point with respect to the parameter can usually not be evaluated exactly, an adjoint dynamical system can be used to estimate gradients. Using this estimation procedure, the optimization algorithm alternates between derivative estimation and an approximate gradient descent step. We analyze a variant of this approach involving dynamic time-scaling, where after each parameter update the adjoint system is iterated until a convergence threshold is passed. Here, we prove that, under certain conditions, the algorithm can find approximate stationary points of the objective function. We demonstrate the approach in the settings of an inverse problem in chemical kinetics, and learning in attractor networks.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Optimized structure and electronic band gap of monolayer GeSe from quantum Monte Carlo methods

Here, we have used highly accurate quantum Monte Carlo methods to determine the chemical structure and electronic band gaps of monolayer GeSe. Two-dimensional (2D) monolayer GeSe has received a great deal of attention due to its unique thermoelectric, electronic, and optoelectronic properties with a wide range of potential applications. Density functional theory (DFT) methods have usually been applied to obtain optical and structural properties of bulk and 2D GeSe. For the monolayer, DFT typically yields a larger band-gap energy than for bulk GeSe but cannot conclusively determine if the monolayer has a direct or indirect gap. Moreover, the DFT-optimized lattice parameters and atomic coordinates for monolayer GeSe depend strongly on the choice of approximation for the exchange-correlation functional, which makes the ideal structure-and its electronic properties-unclear. In order to obtain accurate lattice parameters and atomic coordinates for the monolayer, we use a surrogate Hessian-based parallel line search within diffusion Monte Carlo to fully optimize the GeSe monolayer structure. The DMC-optimized structure is different from those obtained using DFT, as are calculated band gaps. The potential energy surface has a shallow minimum at the optimal structure. This, combined with the sensitivity of the electronic structure to strain, suggests that the optical properties of monolayer GeSe are highly tunable by strain.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Dynamic mode decomposition for extrapolating nonequilibrium Green's-function dynamics

The Hartree-Fock generalized Kadanoff-Baym ansatz (HF-GKBA) offers an approximate numerical procedure for propagating the two-time nonequilibrium Green's function (NEGF). Here, using the GW self-energy, we compare the HF-GKBA to exact results for a variety of systems with long- and short-range interactions, different two-body interaction strengths, and various nonequilibrium preparations. We find excellent agreement between the HF-GKBA and exact time evolution in models when more realistic long-range exponentially decaying interactions are considered. Furthermore, this agreement persists for long times and for intermediate to strong interaction strengths. In large systems, HF-GKBA becomes prohibitively expensive for long-time evolutions. For this reason, we look at the use of dynamical mode decomposition (DMD) to reconstruct long-time NEGF trajectories from a sample of the initial trajectory. Using no more than 16% of the total time evolution, we reconstruct the total trajectory with high fidelity. Our results show the potential for DMD to be used in conjunction with HF-GKBA to calculate long-time trajectories in large-scale systems.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Kohn–Sham accuracy from orbital-free density functional theory via Δ-machine learning

Here, we present a Δ-machine learning model for obtaining Kohn–Sham accuracy from orbital-free density functional theory (DFT) calculations. In particular, we employ a machine-learned force field (MLFF) scheme based on the kernel method to capture the difference between Kohn–Sham and orbital-free DFT energies/forces. We implement this model in the context of on-the-fly molecular dynamics simulations and study its accuracy, performance, and sensitivity to parameters for representative systems. We find that the formalism not only improves the accuracy of Thomas–Fermi–von Weizsäcker orbital-free energies and forces by more than two orders of magnitude but is also more accurate than MLFFs based solely on Kohn–Sham DFT while being more efficient and less sensitive to model parameters. We apply the framework to study the structure of molten Al 0.88 Si 0.12 , the results suggesting no aggregation of Si atoms, in agreement with a previous Kohn–Sham study performed at an order of magnitude smaller length and time scales.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Nuclear properties for astrophysical and radioactive-ion-beam applications (II)

We tabulate the ground-state odd-proton and odd-neutron spins and parities, proton and neutron pairing gaps, one- and two-neutron separation energies, quantities related to β-delayed one- and two-neutron emission probabilities, average energy and average number of emitted neutrons, β-decay energy release and half-life with respect to Gamow–Teller decay with a phenomenological treatment of first-forbidden decays, one- and two-proton separation energies, and α-decay energy release and half-life for 9318 nuclei ranging from {sup 16}O to {sup 339}136 and extending from the proton drip line to the neutron drip line. This paper is a new and improved version of Atomic Data And Nuclear Data Tables [66 131 (1997)]. The starting point of our present work is the new study (FRDM(2012)) of nuclear ground-state masses and deformations based on the finite-range droplet model and folded-Yukawa single-particle potential published in a previous issue of Atomic Data And Nuclear Data Tables [109–110, 1 (2016)]. The β-delayed neutron-emission probabilities and Gamow–Teller β-decay rates are obtained from a quasi-particle random-phase approximation with single-particle levels and wave functions at the calculated nuclear ground-state shapes as input quantities. A development since 1997 is we now use a Hauser–Feshbach approach to account for (n, γ) competition and treat first-forbidden decay in a phenomenological approach.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗