Metal-insulator transition tuned by oxygen vacancy migration across TiO2/VO2 interface.

Oxygen defects are essential building blocks for designing functional oxides with remarkable properties, ranging from electrical and ionic conductivity to magnetism and ferroelectricity. Oxygen defects, despite being spatially localized, can profoundly alter global properties such as the crystal symmetry and electronic structure, thereby enabling emergent phenomena. In this work, we achieved tunable metal-insulator transitions (MIT) in oxide heterostructures by inducing interfacial oxygen vacancy migration. We chose the non-stoichiometric VO2-δ as a model system due to its near room temperature MIT temperature. We found that depositing a TiO2 capping layer on an epitaxial VO2 thin film can effectively reduce the resistance of the insulating phase in VO2, yielding a significantly reduced ROFF/RON ratio. We systematically studied the TiO2/VO2 heterostructures by structural and transport measurements, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and ab initio calculations and found that oxygen vacancy migration from TiO2 to VO2 is responsible for the suppression of the MIT. Our findings underscore the importance of the interfacial oxygen vacancy migration and redistribution in controlling the electronic structure and emergent functionality of the heterostructure, thereby providing a new approach to designing oxide heterostructures for novel ionotronics and neuromorphic-computing devices.

QMCPACK: Advances in the development, efficiency, and application of auxiliary field and real-space variational and diffusion quantum Monte Carlo.

We review recent advances in the capabilities of the open source ab initio Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) package QMCPACK and the workflow tool Nexus used for greater efficiency and reproducibility. The auxiliary field QMC (AFQMC) implementation has been greatly expanded to include k-point symmetries, tensor-hypercontraction, and accelerated graphical processing unit (GPU) support. These scaling and memory reductions greatly increase the number of orbitals that can practically be included in AFQMC calculations, increasing the accuracy. Advances in real space methods include techniques for accurate computation of bandgaps and for systematically improving the nodal surface of ground state wavefunctions. Results of these calculations can be used to validate application of more approximate electronic structure methods, including GW and density functional based techniques. To provide an improved foundation for these calculations, we utilize a new set of correlation-consistent effective core potentials (pseudopotentials) that are more accurate than previous sets; these can also be applied in quantum-chemical and other many-body applications, not only QMC. These advances increase the efficiency, accuracy, and range of properties that can be studied in both molecules and materials with QMC and QMCPACK.

Computation of Dynamic Polarizabilities and van der Waals Coefficients from Path-Integral Monte Carlo.

We demonstrate computation of total dynamic multipole polarizabilities using path-integral Monte Carlo method (PIMC). The PIMC approach enables accurate thermal and nonadiabatic mixing of electronic, rotational, and vibrational degrees of freedom. Therefore, we can study the thermal effects, or lack thereof, in the full multipole spectra of the chosen one- and two-electron systems: H, Ps, He, Ps2, H2, and HD+. We first compute multipole-multipole correlation functions up to octupole order in imaginary time. The real-domain spectral function is then obtained by analytical continuation with the maximum entropy method. In general, sharpness of the active spectra is limited, but the obtained off-resonant polarizabilities are in good agreement with the existing literature. Several weak and strong thermal effects are observed. Furthermore, the polarizabilities of Ps2 and some higher multipole and higher frequency data have not been published before. In addition, we compute isotropic dispersion coefficients C6, C8, and C10 between pairs of species using the simplified Casimir-Polder formulas.

QMCPACK: an open source ab initio quantum Monte Carlo package for the electronic structure of atoms, molecules and solids.

QMCPACK is an open source quantum Monte Carlo package for ab initio electronic structure calculations. It supports calculations of metallic and insulating solids, molecules, atoms, and some model Hamiltonians. Implemented real space quantum Monte Carlo algorithms include variational, diffusion, and reptation Monte Carlo. QMCPACK uses Slater-Jastrow type trial wavefunctions in conjunction with a sophisticated optimizer capable of optimizing tens of thousands of parameters. The orbital space auxiliary-field quantum Monte Carlo method is also implemented, enabling cross validation between different highly accurate methods. The code is specifically optimized for calculations with large numbers of electrons on the latest high performance computing architectures, including multicore central processing unit and graphical processing unit systems. We detail the program's capabilities, outline its structure, and give examples of its use in current research calculations. The package is available at http://qmcpack.org.

Static field-gradient polarizabilities of small atoms and molecules at finite temperature.

In this work, we propose new field-free estimators of static field-gradient polarizabilities for finite temperature path-integral Monte Carlo method. Namely, dipole-quadrupole polarizability A, dipole-dipole-quadrupole polarizability B, and quadrupole-quadrupole polarizability C are computed for several up to two-electron systems: H, H-, He, Li+, Be2+, Ps2, PsH, H2+, H2, H3+, and HeH+. We provide complementary data for ground state electronic properties within the adiabatic approximation and demonstrate good agreement with available values in the literature. More importantly, we present fully non-adiabatic results from 50 K to 1600 K, which allow us to analyze and discuss strong thermal coupling and rovibrational effects in total field-gradient polarizabilities. These phenomena are most relevant but clearly overlooked, e.g., in the construction of modern polarizable force field models. However, our main purpose is demonstrating the accuracy and simplicity of our approach in a problem that is generally challenging.

How large are nonadiabatic effects in atomic and diatomic systems?

With recent developments in simulating nonadiabatic systems to high accuracy, it has become possible to determine how much energy is attributed to nuclear quantum effects beyond zero-point energy. In this work, we calculate the non-relativistic ground-state energies of atomic and molecular systems without the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. For this purpose, we utilize the fixed-node diffusion Monte Carlo method, in which the nodes depend on both the electronic and ionic positions. We report ground-state energies for all systems studied, ionization energies for the first-row atoms and atomization energies for the first-row hydrides. We find the ionization energies of the atoms to be nearly independent of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, within the accuracy of our results. The atomization energies of molecular systems, however, show small effects of the nonadiabatic coupling between electrons and nuclei.

First-principles simulation of molecular dissociation-recombination equilibrium.

For the first time, the equilibrium composition of chemical dissociation-recombination reaction is simulated from first-principles, only. Furthermore, beyond the conventional ab initio Born-Oppenheimer quantum chemistry the effects from the thermal and quantum equilibrium dynamics of nuclei are consistently included, as well as, the nonadiabatic coupling between the electrons and the nuclei. This has been accomplished by the path integral Monte Carlo simulations for full NVT quantum statistics of the H(3)(+) ion. The molecular total energy, partition function, free energy, entropy, and heat capacity are evaluated in a large temperature range: from below room temperature to temperatures relevant for planetary atmospheric physics. Temperature and density dependent reaction balance of the molecular ion and its fragments above 4000 K is presented, and also the density dependence of thermal ionization above 10,000 K is demonstrated.

Finite temperature quantum statistics of H(3) (+) molecular ion.

Full quantum statistical NVT simulation of the five-particle system H(3) (+) has been carried out using the path integral Monte Carlo method. Structure and energetics are evaluated as a function of temperature up to the thermal dissociation limit. The weakly density dependent dissociation temperature is found to be around 4000 K. Contributions from the quantum dynamics and thermal motion are sorted out by comparing differences between simulations with quantum and classical nuclei. The essential role of the quantum description of the protons is established.