Theoretical study of low-lying excited states of molecular aggregates. I. Development of linear-scaling TD-DFT

The project aims to develop an integrated linear-scaling time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) for studying low-lying excited states of luminescent molecular materials, especially those fluorescence and phosphorescence co-emitting systems. The central idea will be "from fragments to molecule" (FF2M). That is, the fragmental information will be employed to synthesize the molecular wave function, such that the locality (transferability) of the fragments (functional groups) is directly built into the algorithms. Both relativistic and spin-adapted open-shell TD-DFT will be considered. Use of the renormalized exciton method will also be made to further enhance the efficiency and accuracy of TD-DFT. Solvent effects are to be targeted with the fragment-based solvent model. It is expected that the integrated TD-DFT and program will be of great value in rational design of luminescent molecular materials.

Linear-scaling computation of excited states in time-domain

The applicability of quantum mechanical methods is severely limited by their poor scaling.To circumvent the problem,linearscaling methods for quantum mechanical calculations had been developed.The physical basis of linear-scaling methods is the locality in quantum mechanics where the properties or observables of a system are weakly influenced by factors spatially far apart.Besides the substantial efforts spent on devising linear-scaling methods for ground state,there is also a growing interest in the development of linear-scaling methods for excited states.This review gives an overview of linear-scaling approaches for excited states solved in real time-domain.

Computational Characterization of Nanosystems

Nanosystems play an important role in many applications.Due to their complexity,it is challenging to accurately characterize their structure and properties.An important means to reach such a goal is computational simulation,which is grounded on ab initio electronic structure calculations.Low scaling and accurate electronic-structure algorithms have been developed in recent years.Especially,the efficiency of hybrid density functional calculations for periodic systems has been significantly improved.With electronic structure information,simulation methods can be developed to directly obtain experimentally comparable data.For example,scanning tunneling microscopy images can be effectively simulated with advanced algorithms.When the system we are interested in is strongly coupled to environment,such as the Kondo effect,solving the hierarchical equations of motion turns out to be an effective way of computational characterization.Furthermore,the first principles simulation on the excited state dynamics rapidly emerges in recent years,and nonadiabatic molecular dynamics method plays an important role.For nanosystem involved chemical processes,such as graphene growth,multiscale simulation methods should be developed to characterize their atomic details.In this review,we review some recent progresses in methodology development for computational characterization of nanosystems.Advanced algorithms and software are essential for us to better understand of the nanoworld.

An Efficient Multigrid Method for Molecular Mechanics Modeling in Atomic Solids

We propose a multigrid method to solve the molecular mechanics model(molecular dynamics at zero temperature).The Cauchy-Born elasticity model is employed as the coarse grid operator and the elastically deformed state as the initial guess of the molecular mechanics model.The efficiency of the algorithm is demonstrated by three examples with homogeneous deformation,namely,one dimensional chain under tensile deformation and aluminum under tension and shear deformations.The method exhibits linear-scaling computational complexity,and is insensitive to parameters arising from iterative solvers.In addition,we study two examples with inhomogeneous deformation:vacancy and nanoindentation of aluminum.The results are still satisfactory while the linear-scaling property is lost for the latter example.