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Abstract:

High-level vibrational calculations have been used to investigate anharmonicity in a wide variety of materials using density-functional-theory (DFT) methods. We have developed a new and efficient approach for describing strongly-anharmonic systems using a vibrational self-consistent-field (VSCF) method. By far the most computationally expensive part of the calculations is the mapping of an accurate Born-Oppenheimer (BO) energy surface within the region of interest. Here we present an improved method which reduces the computational cost of the mapping. In this approach we use data from a set of energy calculations for different vibrational distortions of the materials and the corresponding forces on the atoms. Results using both energies and forces are presented for the test cases of the hydrogen molecule, solid hydrogen under high pressure including mapping of two-dimensional subspaces of the BO surface, and the bcc phases of the metals Li and Zr. The use of forces data speeds up the anharmonic calculations by up to 40%.

Abstract:

First-principles density functional theory methods are used to investigate the structure, energetics, and vibrational motions of the neutral vacancy defect in diamond. The measured optical absorption spectrum demonstrates that the tetrahedral Td point group symmetry of pristine diamond is maintained when a vacancy defect is present. This is shown to arise from the presence of a dynamic Jahn-Teller distortion that is stabilized by large vibrational anharmonicity. Our calculations further demonstrate that the dynamic Jahn-Teller-distorted structure of Td symmetry is lower in energy than the static Jahn-Teller distorted tetragonal D2d vacancy defect, in agreement with experimental observations. The tetrahedral vacancy structure becomes more stable with respect to the tetragonal structure by increasing temperature. The large anharmonicity arises mainly from quartic vibrations, and is associated with a saddle point of the Born-Oppenheimer surface and a minimum in the free energy. This study demonstrates that the behavior of Jahn-Teller distortions of point defects can be calculated accurately using anharmonic vibrational methods. Our work will open the way for first-principles treatments of dynamic Jahn-Teller systems in condensed matter.

Abstract:

By solving the Boltzmann transport equation we investigate theoretically the general form of oscillations in the resistivity caused by varying the direction of an applied magnetic field for the case of quasi-two dimensional systems on hexagonal lattices. The presence of the angular magnetoresistance oscillations can be used to map out the topology of the Fermi surface and we study how this effect varies as a function of the degree of interplane warping as well as a function of the degree of isotropic scattering. We find that the angular dependent effect due to in-plane rotation follows the symmetry imposed by the lattice whereas for inter-plane rotation the degree of warping dictates the dominant features observed in simulations. Our calculations make predictions for specific angle-dependent magnetotransport signatures in magnetic fields expected for quasi-two dimensional hexagonal compounds similar to PdCoO2 and PtCoO2.