As we saw in the previous lab, we get easy access to the first derivatives of the total energy with respect to various parameters in a basic self-consistent calculation of the density of a system via the Hellmann-Feynman theorem. However, if we want to access second derivatives, so that we can calculate, for example, vibrational frequencies, we need to do a little more.
Vibrational Modes of Methane
We’ll start by calculating the vibrational modes of a molecule. This calculation is set up in 2 parts:
- A self consistent calculation of the density and wavefunction. You might notice this is often the first step in many of the calculations we do.
- A DFPT calculation of the dynamical matrix and normal modes. As we have a molecule, we only need look at the gamma point here.
This calculation is set up in the 01_CH4
directory.
- First take a look at the input file for the scf calculation. This doesn’t have any inputs you haven’t seen before. There are three things you should take note of though:
We’ve specified the gamma point only by asking for a 1x1x1 unshifted grid, whereas previously we’ve usually explicitly asked for the gamma point. This latter option uses optimizations that can make the calculation a bit faster if we only use the gamma point, however it does not generate output that is compatible with the subsequent DFPT calculation of the frequencies, so we instead specify the gamma point in the manner done in the file.
We’ve re-oriented the molecule relative to what you’ve seen previously, and the atomic positions have also been optimized. By specifying the atoms in this manner, where the components of the hydrogens along each direction have the same magnitude but different signs, the code is much better able to detect the symmetry of the molecule. This is very important for calculations of the vibrations. If the code understands that all the hydrogen atoms are equivalent by symmetry, it need only calculate the derivatives of the energy with respect to one of the hydrogen positions, and then it can populate the full dynamical matrix based on the symmetry of the system.
We’ve increased the default value of
ecutrho
which is usually four times the value ofecutwfc
. This can help alleviate some issues with acoustic mode frequencies at gamma mentioned below.
Use this input file to run a calculation with
pw.x
, and save the output to a file. Check it worked as expected.Now take a look at the input file for the DFPT calculation. This is as follows:
phonons of CH4 (gamma only)
&inputph
tr2_ph = 1.0d-15
asr = .true.
/
0.0 0.0 0.0
This input file is for the
ph.x
code which uses the output of a SCF calculation withpw.x
to do a DFPT calculation of the dynamical matrix. Many more input options are available than we’ve used here. These are described in theINPUT_PH.txt
file of the quantum espresso documentation.- Here the first line is a comment. This can be whatever description you like of your input file
- This is followed by a single section:
INPUTPH
. We’ve specified two variables here.tr2_ph
which defines the threshold for self-consistency, with a default of 1.0d-12.asr
which turns on the use of the acoustic sum rule which sets the three translational modes at gamma to zero (or at least near zero).
- Following this section, and depending on what input variables have been defined, we can give a list of wavevectors at which we want to calculate the vibrational frequencies. As with the electronic problem, we are modelling a molecule, so only the gamma point makes sense.
Use
ph.x
to run this calculation and save the output to a file.You’ll see along with the output file, several files and folders have been generated:
matdyn
(the name of this file can be changed in the input file) - this stores the dynamical matrix, which can then be passed to several other codes for further analysis. Take a look at it now.- The top of the file has the atoms, their masses (in internal units) and positions.
- This is followed by the dynamical matrix (3x3 complex numbers for each possible pair of atoms - all the imaginary parts are zero at gamma).
- Finally the frequencies of each calculated vibrational mode, both in THz and cm-1 are given along with the corresponding wavevector. A molecule with 5 atoms will have 15 possible vibrational modes.
_ph0
- contains intermediate and restart data for theph.x
calculation.
Now let’s look through the output of the
ph.x
calculation.- Near the top you’ll see an analysis of the number of calculations that need to be done given the symmetry of the system. You’ll note that only 3 of the 15 total representations need to be explicitly calculated. This is why it’s so important to have the code detect the symmetry of your system correctly. Potentially the calculation could have been 5 times slower.
- This is followed by a self consistent calculation for each of the representations that need to be calculated.
- Then we have the frequencies obtained by diagonalizing the dynamical matrix.
- Finally we have a symmetry analysis of the resulting modes, giving the mode symmetry and whether they should be detectable by Raman or infrared spectroscropy or both.
You’ll likely have noticed we have 3 quite negative frequencies. These are the rotational modes of the molecule. It’s difficult to get these to come out to be zero in the DPFT calculation. In principle this could be enforced by a suitable constraint in the code, but this is not available in
ph.x
. It’s possible in some other codes however.The subsequent three modes near zero are the three translational modes, and these have been enforced to be close to zero by the
asr
setting in the input file.Note as the frequency is calculated using the square root of the curvature of the energy, a negative frequency is in fact a convention used to indicate that the frequency is imaginary, and the energy curvature is negative. This can indicate some instability in the system, so it is good to ensure you are starting from an optimized structure as you learned how to do last week.
Task
- Try running the calculation with a higher energy cut-off to see how well converged the vibrational frequencies are.
Phonon Bandstructure of Carbon Diamond
Now that you’ve seen how to calculate the frequencies at a single wavevector,
the next step is to calculate the phonon band dispersion of a crystal. The
directory 02_CarbonDiamond
contains a set of input files
for carbon diamond.
This calculation has five steps:
- Perform self-consistent calculation of the density and wavefunction.
- Calculate the dynamical matrix on a set of wavevectors. I’ll call these q-points from here on, and use k-points to refer to electronic wavevectors.
- Fourier transform our grid of dynamical matrices to obtain a set of real space force constants.
- Perform an inverse Fourier transform of the real space force constants to obtain the dynamical matrix at an arbitrary q-point. This allows us calculate mode frequencies for a fairly dense set of points along lines between high-symmetry points in the same manner as for the electronic band structure.
- Generate the plot.
- First examine the scf input file in
01_CD_scf.in
. This is similar to those we’ve seen before. This time we’ve specifiedprefix
. This can be useful if you’ve got different calculations in the same directory. Again, we’ve increasedecutrho
from its default. The rest is as before. Run
pw.x
using this input file and save the output.- The other output files generated will be in
CD.save
since we set the prefix. - Check the output to make sure it completed all right.
- The other output files generated will be in
Now examine the
ph.x
input file in02_CD_ph.in
.- This is structured as before, but now:
- We have specified the same prefix as in the scf input file
- We’ve set
ldisp = .true.
which says we’re going to calculate a grid of q-points. nq1
,nq2
andnq3
define our q-point grid then.
- This is structured as before, but now:
Run
ph.x
using this input file and save the output. This will take maybe 5 or 6 minutes to complete, so feel free to read ahead while it’s running.Once complete you’ll see several files have been generated in the calculation directory.
matdyn0
has the q-point grid used followed by a list of the q-points at which the dynamical matrix has been calculated.matdyn1
,matdyn2
, etc is the dynamical matrix at each calculated q-point as before.
Now take a look through the main output file.
- You’ll see it’s quite similar to the methane case, but now contains a section for each calculated q-point where it figured how how many represenations need to be calculated based on the symmetry, an scf cycle for each, and the frequencies and mode symmetries obtained by diagonalizing the dynamical matrix at that q-point.
- It’s good to look through this file and ensure you’re getting reasonable numbers for the frequencies before proceeding.
Next we’ll be generating the real space force constants from our grid of dynamical matrices using the
q2r.x
code.q2r.x
doesn’t have a help file like the other codes. You need to inspect the source file inPHonon/PH/q2r.f90
if you download a copy of the quantum espresso source code. The inputs are all described in a comment at the top of this file. On the mt-student server you can see this file at/opt/build/quantum-espresso/q-e-qe-6.3/PHonon/PH/q2r.f90
.Take a look at the
q2r.x
input file `03_CD_q2r.in. The contents are as follows:&input fildyn = 'matdyn' zasr = 'simple' flfrc = 'CD444.fc' /
Here we’ve specified:
fildyn
, which is the name of the dynamical matrix files fromph.x
, where we left it at the default value ofmatdyn
.zasr
, which is the approach used to enforce the acoustic sum rule and make the acoustic modes go to zero at the gamma point.filefrc
is the name of the file in which to output the force constants in real space.
Run
q2r.x
with this input file now and save the output. This will run almost instantly.The output isn’t particularly interesting. The
CD444.fc
file has the force constants for each pair of atoms in each direction for each of the 4x4x4 unit cells in real space.Finally we want to use this to generate our normal mode dispersion. We’ll be doing this with the
matdyn.x
code. As withq2r.x
this doesn’t have a doc file describing its input variables. But you can check the comments at the top of its source file to get their details. On the mt-student server this is at/opt/build/quantum-espresso/q-e-qe-6.3/PHonon/PH/matdyn.f90
.Take a look at our input file
04_CD_matdyn-bands.in
. The content is as follows:&input asr = 'simple' flfrc = 'CD444.fc' flfrq = 'CD-bands.freq' dos=.false. q_in_band_form=.true. / 8 0.000 0.000 0.000 30 0.375 0.375 0.750 10 0.500 0.500 1.000 30 1.000 1.000 1.000 30 0.500 0.500 0.500 30 0.000 0.500 0.500 30 0.250 0.500 0.750 30 0.500 0.500 0.500 0
Here we’re setting:
asr
to again tell it to try to force the acoustic modes at gamma to go to zero.flfrc
to give it the name of the file with the real space force constants from theq2r.x
calculation.flfrq
to give it the name of the output file to store its calculated frequencies.dos
to tell it we’re not calculating a density of statesq_in_band_form
to tell it we want to calculate bands between high symmetry points.- We finally give it a number and list of high symmetry points with the number of points to calculate along each line, in the same way as we did for the electronic band structure.
Run
matdyn.x
using this input file now and save the output. Again this is very fast.There’s very little actual output from the code itself, but it will generate the files
CD-bands.freq
andCD-bands.freq.gp
. Both of which contain the frequencies along the lines we requested. Now we need to turn it into a plot.Finally we want to generate a plot of these frequencies. We could do that directly with the previous output:
CD-bands.freq.gp
is a multicolumn space separated list of the frequencies in cm-1.- It can be easier to use the
plotband.x
tool to help generate a plot. - Call this with
plotband.x CD-bands.freq
. This will then ask you for an Emin and Emax value - you should pick values equal to or below and above the numbers it suggests. Then it will ask you for an output file name. Pick “CD-bands-gpl.dat” here. You can then cancel further running of this code withctrl+c
. Note it has output the location of the high-symmetry points along its x-axis.
- It can be easier to use the
Once you’ve done this, a gnuplot script
plotbands.gplt
has been provided that you can use to generate the band structure plot. This is very similar to the one used for the electronic band structure, but the location of the high-symmetry points along the x-axis has changed as has the name of the data file we’re plotting. Run this withgnuplot plotbands.gplt
.
Phonon Density of States of Carbon Diamond
As you might have noticed, we’ve already done most of the work needed to also
calculate a phonon density of states. This can be done following the q2r.x
calculation by choosing some different input options for matdyn.x
. Take a
look at the input file
05_CD_matdyn-dos.in
. The contents
are as follows:
&input
asr='simple'
flfrc='CD444.fc'
flfrq='CD-dos.freq'
dos=.true.,
nk1=20,nk2=20,nk3=20
fldos='CD-q20.dos'
/
This is quite similar to the band plot, but now we’re setting dos
to true,
choosing a dense q-point grid on which to recalculate our frequencies, and
specifying an output for the density of states.
Run matdyn.x
now with this input file. It’ll take a bit longer than the
band calculation as it uses the tetrahedron method to integrate the
density of states. The file it generates: CD-q20.dos
can be plotted
in whatever plotting software you like.
Summary
In this lab we have seen
- For a molecule:
- How to use the
pw.x
code to calculate a converged density and wavefunction and then use these with theph.x
code to calculate the vibrational modes using DFPT.
- How to use the
- For a crystal:
- How to use the
pw.x
code to calculate a converged density and wavefunction. - How to use these with the
ph.x
code to calculate the phonon modes on a grid of wavevectors. - How to transform these to obtain real-space force constants using the
q2r.x
code. - How to use the real-space force constants to obtain a phonon mode bandstructure along lines between high-symmetry points in the Brillouin zone.
- How to plot the bandstructure with gnuplot in a similar way to how we plot the electronic bandstructure in a previous lab.
- How to use the
Extra: Task
- Calculate the phonon band structure and density of states of silicon.