MaX paper

Spin-orbit coupling (SOC) is generally understood as a highly localized interaction within each atom, whereby core electrons holding large J splittings transfer the SOC to the valence electrons of the same atom, while their direct impact on neighbor valence orbitals is usually small. Seivane and Ferrer [Phys. Rev. Lett.

The simulation and analysis of the thermal stability of nanoparticles, a stepping stone towards their application in technological devices, require fast and accurate force fields, in conjunction with effective characterisation methods. In this work, the authors develop efficient, transferable, and interpretable machine learning force fields for gold nanoparticles based on data gathered from Density Functional Theory calculations.

Interference effects in finite sections of one-dimensional moiré crystals are investigated using a Landauer-Büttiker formalism within the tight-binding approximation. The authors explain interlayer transport in double-wall carbon nanotubes and design a predictive model. Wave function interference is visible at the mesoscale: in the strong coupling regime, as a periodic modulation of quantum conductance and emergent localized states; in the localized-insulating regime, as a suppression of interlayer transport, and oscillations of the density of states.

In the GW approximation, the screened interaction W is a nonlocal and dynamical potential that usually has a complex frequency dependence. A full description of such a dependence is possible but often computationally demanding. For this reason, it is still common practice to approximate W(ω) using a plasmon pole (PP) model. Such an approach, however, may deliver an accuracy limited by its simplistic description of the frequency dependence of the polarizability, i.e., of W.

Within density functional theory, we have studied the interplay between vortex arrays and capillary waves in spinning prolate 4He droplets made of several thousand helium atoms. Surface capillary waves are ubiquitous in prolate superfluid 4He droplets, and depending on the size and angular momentum of the droplet, they may coexist with vortex arrays. The authors have found that the equilibrium configuration of small prolate droplets is vortex free, evolving towards vortex hosting as the droplet size increases. This result is in agreement with a recent experiment [O'Connell et al., Phys.

Femtosecond light-induced phase transitions between different macroscopic orders provide the possibility to tune the functional properties of condensed matter on ultrafast timescales. In first-order phase transitions, transient non-equilibrium phases and inherent phase coexistence often preclude non-ambiguous detection of transition precursors and their temporal onset.

The author presents a fully ab initio scheme to model transient spectroscopy signals in the presence of strongly bound excitons. Using LiF as a prototype material, the authors shows that the scheme is able to capture the exciton signature both in time-resolved angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and transient absorption experiments. The approach is completely general and can become the reference scheme for modeling pump and probe experiment in a wide range of materials.

The prediction of material properties based on density-functional theory has become routinely common, thanks, in part, to the steady increase in the number and robustness of available simulation packages. This plurality of codes and methods is both a boon and a burden. While providing great opportunities for cross-verification, these packages adopt different methods, algorithms, and paradigms, making it challenging to choose, master, and efficiently use them.

The Open Databases Integration for Materials Design (OPTIMADE) consortium has designed a universal application programming interface (API) to make materials databases accessible and interoperable. We outline the first stable release of the specification, v1.0, which is already supported by many leading databases and several software packages. We illustrate the advantages of the OPTIMADE API through worked examples on each of the public materials databases that support the full API specification.

In this work, the authors elaborate on two recently discovered invariance principles, according to which transport coefficients are, to a large extent, independent of the microscopic definition of the densities and currents of the conserved quantities being transported (energy, momentum, mass, charge). The first such principle, gauge invariance, allows one to define a quantum adiabatic energy current from density-functional theory, from which the heat conductivity can be uniquely defined and computed using equilibrium ab initio molecular dynamics.