PseudosPAW
This page gives hints on how to master the use of norm-conserving pseudopotentials and PAW atomic data, and their consequences with the ABINIT package.
Introduction¶
ABINIT can read many different types of norm-conserving pseudopotentials and PAW atomic data. The names of the files to be used in an ABINIT run are to be provided in the “files” file, one for each type of atom. Note that one cannot mix norm-conserving pseudopotentials with PAW atomic data files in a single ABINIT run, even for different datasets. One has to stick either to norm-conserving pseudopotentials or to PAW.
Norm-conserving pseudopotential tables
There are several sets of norm-conserving pseudopotentials available for most elements of the periodic table, either in LDA or in GGA-PBE. The recommended one (GGA-PBE, ixc=11) comes from the ONCVPSP generator. For the formalism please consult [Hamann2013]. The generation and validation of the table is discussed in [Setten2018].
Others are also available. The Goedecker HGH table (e.g. LDA, ixc=1), also including spin-orbit is rather accurate, but requires often large ecut. The old Troullier-Martins type tables are deprecated, because not accurate enough, and also not including spin-orbit coupling. The different formats for norm-conserving pseudopotentials are described in https://wiki.abinit.org/doku.php?id=developers:pseudos. A much more flexible and powerful file format (PSM) has been recently proposed in [Garcia2018]. The format is supported by Abinit via the psml library that must be activated by user during the configuration of the package.
PAW atomic data tables
Five large sets of PAW atomic data can be read by ABINIT. The
JTH table
is recommended (GGA-PBE, ixc=11).
It uses the PAW-XML format.
Others are also available.
Validation
Many pseudopotentials (norm-conserving as well as PAW) have been tested against all-electron calculations, see the section “Documents and tools” paragraph about the “Delta” project on the ABINIT web site PAW page. In paw3 tutorial it is explained How to perform more detailed comparisons with an all-electron code.
Generation
Six codes are available to generate new pseudopotentials when needed, see the related ABINIT web page. For norm-conserving pseudopotentials, ONCVPSP is the preferred one. The ultra-soft pseudopotentials generated by “USPP” are approximations of the Projector Augmented Wave approach, and are treated within the PAW framework in ABINIT. The ATOMPAW generator is actually tightly connected to ABINIT such that there are ABINIT automatic tests in which a PAW atomic data is generated, and then used in ABINIT. There is also a dedicated tutorial to ATOMPAW/ABINIT.
Miscellaneous
Norm-conserving pseudopotentials can be mixed, to generate “alchemical” pseudoatoms, see topic_AtomTypes.
Related Input Variables¶
compulsory:
expert:
- npsp Number of PSeudoPotentials to be read
internal:
- %ziontypat Z (charge) of the IONs for the different TYPes of AToms
Selected Input Files¶
No input file associated to this topic.
Tutorials¶
- Second tutorial on the projector-augmented wave technique The generation of atomic data.
- Third tutorial on the projector-augmented wave technique Testing PAW datasets against an all-electron code.