## Recent Publications

Nazarov, V. U. ; Baer, R. The high frequency limit of spectroscopy. arXiv:2101.09467 [cond-mat] Submitted. Publisher's VersionAbstract

We consider a quantum-mechanical system, finite or extended, initially in its ground-state, exposed to a time-dependent potential pulse, with a slowly varying envelope and a carrier frequency \$\textbackslashomega\_0\$. By working out a rigorous solution of the time-dependent Schr\textbackslash"odinger equation in the high-\$\textbackslashomega\_0\$ limit, we show that the linear response is completely suppressed after the switch-off of the pulse. We show, at the same time, that to the lowest order in \$\textbackslashomega\_0ˆ\-1\\$, observables are given in terms of the linear density response function \$\textbackslashchi(\textbackslashrv,\textbackslashrv',\textbackslashomega)\$, despite the problem's nonlinearity. We propose a new spectroscopic technique based on these findings, which we name the Nonlinear High-Frequency Pulsed Spectroscopy (NLHFPS). An analysis of the jellium slab and sphere models reveals very high surface sensitivity of NLHFPS, which produces a richer excitation spectrum than accessible within the linear-response regime. Combining the advantages of the extraordinary surface sensitivity, the absence of constraints by the conventional dipole selection rules, and the ease of theoretical interpretation by means of the linear response time-dependent density functional theory, NLHFPS has the potential to evolve into a powerful characterization method in nanoscience and nanotechnology.

Fabian, M. D. ; Shpiro, B. ; Baer, R. Linear Weak Scalability of Density Functional Theory Calculations without Imposing Electron Localization. J. Chem. Theory Comput. 2022, acs.jctc.1c00829. Publisher's VersionAbstract

Linear scaling density functional theory (DFT) approaches to the electronic structure of materials are often based on the tendency of electrons to localize in large atomic and molecular systems. However, in many cases of actual interest, such as semiconductor nanocrystals, system sizes can reach a substantial extension before signiﬁcant electron localization sets in, causing a considerable deviation from linear scaling. Herein, we address this class of systems by developing a massively parallel DFT approach which does not rely on electron localization and is formally quadratic scaling yet enables highly eﬃcient linear wall-time complexity in the weak scalability regime. The method extends from the stochastic DFT approach described in Fabian et al. (WIRES: Comp. Mol. Sci. 2019, e1412) but is entirely deterministic. It uses standard quantum chemical atomcentered Gaussian basis sets to represent the electronic wave functions combined with Cartesian real-space grids for some operators and enables a fast solver for the Poisson equation. Our main conclusion is that when a processor-abundant high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure is available, this type of approach has the potential to allow the study of large systems in regimes where quantum conﬁnement or electron delocalization prevents linear scaling.

Baer, R. ; Neuhauser, D. ; Rabani, E. Stochastic Vector Techniques in Ground-State Electronic Structure. Annu. Rev. Phys. Chem. 2022, 73, annurev–physchem–090519–045916. Publisher's VersionAbstract

We review a suite of stochastic vector computational approaches for studying the electronic structure of extended condensed matter systems. These techniques help reduce algorithmic complexity, facilitate efficient parallelization, simplify computational tasks, accelerate calculations, and diminish memory requirements. While their scope is vast, we limit our study to ground-state and finite temperature density functional theory (DFT) and second-order perturbation theory. More advanced topics, such as quasiparticle (charge) and optical (neutral) excitations and higher-order processes, are covered elsewhere. We start by explaining how to use stochastic vectors in computations, characterizing the associated statistical errors. Next, we show how to estimate the electron density in DFT and discuss highly effective techniques to reduce statistical errors. Finally, we review the use of stochastic vector techniques for calculating correlation energies within the secondorder Møller-Plesset perturbation theory and its finite temperature variational form. Example calculation results are presented and used to demonstrate the efficacy of the methods.

Shpiro, B. ; Fabian, M. D. ; Rabani, E. ; Baer, R. Forces from Stochastic Density Functional Theory under Nonorthogonal Atom-Centered Basis Sets. J. Chem. Theory Comput. 2022, 18, 1458–1466. Publisher's VersionAbstract

We develop a formalism for calculating forces on the nuclei within the linear-scaling stochastic density functional theory (sDFT) in a nonorthogonal atomcentered basis set representation (Fabian et al. Wiley Interdiscip. Rev.: Comput. Mol. Sci. 2019, 9, e1412, 10.1002/wcms.1412) and apply it to the Tryptophan Zipper 2 (Trpzip2) peptide solvated in water. We use an embedded-fragment approach to reduce the statistical errors (ﬂuctuation and systematic bias), where the entire peptide is the main fragment and the remaining 425 water molecules are grouped into small fragments. We analyze the magnitude of the statistical errors in the forces and ﬁnd that the systematic bias is of the order of 0.065 eV/Å (∼1.2 × 10−3Eh/a0) when 120 stochastic orbitals are used, independently of system size. This magnitude of bias is suﬃciently small to ensure that the bond lengths estimated by stochastic DFT (within a Langevin molecular dynamics simulation) will deviate by less than 1% from those predicted by a deterministic calculation.

Nguyen, M. ; Li, W. ; Li, B. (Y. ); Baer, R. ; Rabani, E. ; Neuhauser, D. Tempering stochastic density functional theory. J. Chem. Phys. 2021, 5.0063266. Publisher's VersionAbstract

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 of the statistical fluctuations and the bias compared to sDFT for the same computational effort. We the method's performance on large hydrogen-passivated silicon nanocrystals (NCs), finding a reduction in the systematic error in the energy by more than an order of magnitude, while the systematic errors in the forces are also quenched. Similarly, the statistical fluctuations are reduced by factors of around 4-5 for the total energy and around 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.

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