CECAM/Psi-k Workshop,Lyon, France, 27-29 June 2007

Maximally Localized Wannier Functions:
Concepts, Applications, and Beyond


CECAM/Psi-k workshop, Lyon, France, 27-29 June 2007






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Organizers


Nicola Marzari Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States
Alfredo Pasquarello EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland
Ivo Souza University of California, Berkeley, United States



Accomodation


Please organize your accomodation referring to the specific CECAM web page.


Scientific program


Here is the scientific program of the workshop


Confirmed Invited Participants


Ole K. Andersen Max Planck Institut, Stuttgart, Germany
Christian Brouder University Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France
Roberto Car Princeton University, United States
Stefano de Gironcoli Sissa, Trieste, Italy
Oswaldo Dieguez Rutgers University, United States
Andrea Ferretti University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy
Feliciano Giustino University of California, Berkeley, United States
François Gygi University of California, Davis, United States
Wei Ku Brookhaven National Laboratory, United States
Frank Lechermann University of Hamburg, Germany
Young-Su Lee Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States
Nicola Marzari Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States
Marco Bongiorno Nardelli North Carolina State University, United States
Alfredo Pasquarello EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland
Michel Posternak EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland
Emil Prodan Princeton University, United States
Raffaele Resta University of Trieste, Italy
Ivo Souza University of California, Berkeley, United States
Massimiliano Stengel University of California, Santa Barbara, United States
Timo Thonhauser Rutgers University, United States
Kristian Thygesen Technical University of Denmark, Denmark
Mark E. Tuckerman New York University, United States
Paolo Umari INFM-Democritos, Trieste, Italy
David Vanderbilt Rutgers University, United States
Jonathan Yates Cambridge University, United Kingdom
Oleg Yazyev EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

Other Confirmed Participants


Hazem Abu-Farsakh MPI fuer Eisenforschung, Germany
Berlijn Tom Brookhaven National Laboratory, United States
Bernard Amadon CEA-DIF, Bruyères le Châtel, France
Benedetta Bonferroni Universita' di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Italy
Albert Bartok-Partay University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
Leonardo Bernasconi Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
Eric Cancès CERMICS-ENPC, France
Silvia Casassa Università di Torino, Italy
Frank Freimuth Juelich Research Centre, Germany
Javad Seyed Hashemifar University of Duisburg, Germany
Deepa Kasinathan Max Planck Institute, Dresden, Germany
Amel Laref Oldenburg university, Germany
Oliver Marquardt Max Planck Institute for Iron Research, Germany
Yuriy Mokrousov University of Hamburg, Germany
Gianluca Panati University of Rome La Sapienza, Italy
Noejung Park Dankook University, Seoul, South Korea
Tonatiuh Rangel Université Caholique de Louvain, Belgium
Peter Reinhardt University Paris VI, France
Manu Sharma University of California, Davis, United States
Wenhui Xie Max Planck Institute, Stuttgart, Germany
Eva Zurek Max Planck Institute, Stuttgart, Germany



Tutorial


A tutorial on Wannier functions will be organized at CECAM during the day preceding our workshop, i.e. on Tuesday 26 June 2007. There will be some limited amount of support to cover the extra day and contributions to travel costs from a Marie Curie program (courtesy of the CECAM). This will only apply to PhD students or junior postdocs. For registering officially for this event, please contact Nicola Marzari.


Funding Options


We would like to point out that the NSF supports travel of junior US-based researchers to CECAM workshops through the Materials Computiation Center at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaing. This is intended for young researchers (up to the assistant professor level, including graduate students and post-docs, but excluding senior researchers or scientists at US National Labs). We note that for participants eligible for NSF support CECAM's regulations prevent us from providing financial support for travel expenses unless it is made clear that an application to MCC was rejected. For information refer to this web page. For your convenience, there is also on-line facility for application.

Additional sources of funding for all US-based researchers are the European offices of the Naval Research and Aerospace Research. Psi-k strongly encourages US-based participants to apply to those institutions. Addresses are:
- U.S. Office of Naval Research Global
- European Office of Aerospace Research & Development


Scientific Background


The electronic structure of periodic systems is usually described in terms of the energy eigenfunctions, the Bloch functions, which are also eigenstates of the translation operator. However, these functions are spatially delocalized and offer a description which is not very intuitive. An alternative description of the electronic structure is provided by Maximally Localized Wannier Functions (MLWFs), which favor a representation of the electronic structure in terms of functions localized in real space [1,2]. These functions are obtained by unitary transformation from the energy eigenfunctions and therefore provide a fully equivalent description. Through their center, their extension and their shape, MLWFs provide a description of the electronic structure which is physically insightful. The electron orbitals can be visualized and located with respect to the positions of the atoms. Early investigations on complex crystals [2] and on disordered solids [3] and liquids [4] immediately illustrated the strength of this new concept. Essentially, a MLWF provides information on the local electronic structure in a straightforward and compact form.

Maximally localized Wannier functions are experiencing an increasing success as a monitoring tool of the electronic structure within both the electronic structure [5-9] and ab-initio molecular dynamics communities [10-12]. However, more recently, the particular properties of MLWFs have also attracted interest as a primary methodological tool within more complex theoretical developments. The most interesting aspect of MLWFs is that they allow a decomposition of the electronic structure in local components [1,2]. This property naturally allows one to locally monitor the response of the electronic structure when the investigated system is perturbed, either by the application of external (electric or magnetic) fields or by structural modification. In the study of the polarization, the usefulness of MLWFs is further enhanced by the fact that the displacement of their centers naturally connects with the modern definition of the polarization [1,2]. Hence MLWFs have become the method of choice to investigate the dielectric response in insulator-insulator [13-16] or insulator-metal interfaces [17]. Similarly, MLWFs have shown their usefulness in the study of the response of the electronic structure to a magnetic field [18-20]. These functions have been used in the calculation of NMR shifts [18], but have also turned out to be valuable in establishing the correct definition of the orbital magnetization in periodic systems [19,20]. Recent work on the interpretation of photoemission shifts at semiconductor surfaces and interfaces relies on MLWFs to highlight the role of strain fields [21].

Another exploited property of a set of MLWFs is that they constitute a complete basis set for the occupied states in which hierarchy can be established on the basis of distance to a particular point in space. This property is particularly useful for the introduction of approximations in which role of the local electronic structure is prioritized. Such basis functions have found a natural application in the development of methodologies for large-scale electronic calculations [22,23]. Recent developments also concern the research area of strongly correlated electrons, where MLWFs have recently been introduced as preferred functions for describing the local correlation [24-31].

Maximally localized Wannier functions have also found application in the construction of simplified Hamiltonians for multi-scale approaches. In this case, one uses the property that MLWFs can represent a particular energy window. This is straightforward when the relevant electronic bands are well separated from the other ones, but recent developments have extended such applications also to coupled bands introducing purposely designed disentanglement procedures [32-35]. In particular, these methodological developments are at the basis of several successful applications in the context of transport in nano-sized structures [36-38].

Although most of the early applications of MLWFs were to insulating systems, very recently the usefulness of partially-occupied MLWFs as fast and accurate interpolators for describing Fermi-surface properties of metals has been explored. For example, this has been used to reduce dramatically the computational load needed to evaluate properties such as the anomalous Hall effect of ferromagnets [39] and the electron-phonon coupling [40]. A further recent extension has shown that generalized Wannier functions can be constructed which show small spreads both in space and in energy [41].

The raise of interest in MLWFs has also prompted theoretical work in order to complete the characterization of these functions. Very recent work has been able to demonstrate the exponential nature of the localization [42], extending to three dimensions previous work for one dimension [43]. Furthermore, the real nature of MLWFs, empirically observed in many applications, could be formally demonstrated [42]. The wide-spread use of MLWFs in the ab initio simulation community has also led to the development of molecular dynamics integrators which preserve the localization properties during the course of the evolution [44-46].

A computer module for the generation of MLWFs is freely available [47] and facilitates their wide-spread use across the electronic-structure community. The success of MLWFs has brought several major software packages, such as DACAPO, CPMD and QUANTUM-ESPRESSO, to offer to their users a module for their generation. From the technical point of view, there have been important evolutions in the algorithms that are used to generate MLWFs [48-51].

Finally, it should be mentioned that the concept of MLWF has acquired generality giving rise to applications which extend beyond the description of the electronic structure. For instance, the concept has been used in the context of photonic crystals [52] and recent work shows how generalized Wannier functions can be used to study phonon Hamiltonians [41,40].

As clearly illustrated by this evolution, the use of MLWFs is rapidly expanding across diverse research areas. One of the primary aims of the present workshop is to bring together the major players in these different disciplines in order to share their experiences. These will include researchers in the electronic structure and ab initio simulation community, in physics and in chemistry. Researchers that are primarily interested in new developments and researchers that are more concerned with practical applications will be both represented. While the research areas are diverse, the optimal integration of MLWFs in broader schemes necessarily will face difficulties which are to a large extent common to all concerned research areas. The workshop represents a forum where researchers from various fields meet to expose their views, discuss their ideas, and confront their solutions. Furthermore the interaction between development and application will be beneficial to both parties leading to more focused developments on the one side, and to richer applications on the other.

The planned workshop is the very first one of this nature. The impact of the workshop is expected to be twofold. First, at this time it is not clear whether all the major researchers that have been identified in this proposal are fully aware of all the developments that are occurring in parallel in other research areas. The workshop will therefore contribute in removing potential communication barriers. This will be beneficial to several research fields. Second, the workshop will promote the interaction between development and application. Eventually this will lead to the optimal exploitation of the concept of MLWFs in various contexts.


References


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