Anharmonic phonons via quantum thermal bath simulations

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Baird, Taylor, Vuilleumier, Rodolphe, Bonella, Sara
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Baird, Taylor
Vuilleumier, Rodolphe
Bonella, Sara
author_facet Baird, Taylor
Vuilleumier, Rodolphe
Bonella, Sara
contents Lattice vibrations within crystalline solids, or phonons, provide information on a variety of important material characteristics, from thermal qualities to optical properties and phase transition behaviour. When the material contains light ions, or is subjected to sufficiently low temperatures and/or high pressures, anharmonic and nuclear quantum effects (NQEs) may significantly alter its phonon characteristics. Unfortunately, accurate inclusion of these two effects within numerical simulations typically incurs a substantial computational cost. In this work, we present a novel approach which promises to mitigate this problem. The scheme leverages the recently introduced quantum correlators approach for the extraction of anharmonic phonon frequencies from molecular dynamics data. To account for NQEs without excessive increase of the computational cost, we include nuclear quantum effects via the quantum thermal bath (QTB) method. This is the first full exploration of the use of QTB for the calculation of phonon dispersion relations. We demonstrate the noteworthy efficiency and accuracy of the scheme, and analyze its upsides and drawbacks by first considering 1-dimensional systems, and then the physically interesting case of solid neon.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_21139
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Anharmonic phonons via quantum thermal bath simulations
Baird, Taylor
Vuilleumier, Rodolphe
Bonella, Sara
Computational Physics
Materials Science
Lattice vibrations within crystalline solids, or phonons, provide information on a variety of important material characteristics, from thermal qualities to optical properties and phase transition behaviour. When the material contains light ions, or is subjected to sufficiently low temperatures and/or high pressures, anharmonic and nuclear quantum effects (NQEs) may significantly alter its phonon characteristics. Unfortunately, accurate inclusion of these two effects within numerical simulations typically incurs a substantial computational cost. In this work, we present a novel approach which promises to mitigate this problem. The scheme leverages the recently introduced quantum correlators approach for the extraction of anharmonic phonon frequencies from molecular dynamics data. To account for NQEs without excessive increase of the computational cost, we include nuclear quantum effects via the quantum thermal bath (QTB) method. This is the first full exploration of the use of QTB for the calculation of phonon dispersion relations. We demonstrate the noteworthy efficiency and accuracy of the scheme, and analyze its upsides and drawbacks by first considering 1-dimensional systems, and then the physically interesting case of solid neon.
title Anharmonic phonons via quantum thermal bath simulations
topic Computational Physics
Materials Science
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.21139