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Main Authors: Dick, Henrik, Dahm, Thomas
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.04861
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author Dick, Henrik
Dahm, Thomas
author_facet Dick, Henrik
Dahm, Thomas
contents The electronic structure of solids can routinely be calculated by standard methods like density functional theory. However, in complicated situations like interfaces, grain boundaries or contact geometries one needs to resort to more simplified models of the electronic structure. Tight-binding models are using a reduced set of orbitals and aim to approximate the electronic structure by short range hopping processes. For example, maximally localized Wannier functions are often used for that purpose. However, their accuracy is limited by the need to disentangle the electronic bands. Here, we develop and investigate a different procedure to obtain tight-binding models inspired by machine-learning techniques. The model parameters are optimized in such a way as to reproduce ab-initio band structure data as accurately as possible using an as small as possible number of model parameters. The procedure is shown to result in models with smaller ranges and fewer orbitals than maximally localized Wannier functions but same or even better accuracy. We argue that such a procedure is more useful for automated construction of tight-binding models particularly for large-scale materials calculations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_04861
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Optimization of Ab-Initio Based Tight-Binding Models
Dick, Henrik
Dahm, Thomas
Materials Science
Computational Physics
The electronic structure of solids can routinely be calculated by standard methods like density functional theory. However, in complicated situations like interfaces, grain boundaries or contact geometries one needs to resort to more simplified models of the electronic structure. Tight-binding models are using a reduced set of orbitals and aim to approximate the electronic structure by short range hopping processes. For example, maximally localized Wannier functions are often used for that purpose. However, their accuracy is limited by the need to disentangle the electronic bands. Here, we develop and investigate a different procedure to obtain tight-binding models inspired by machine-learning techniques. The model parameters are optimized in such a way as to reproduce ab-initio band structure data as accurately as possible using an as small as possible number of model parameters. The procedure is shown to result in models with smaller ranges and fewer orbitals than maximally localized Wannier functions but same or even better accuracy. We argue that such a procedure is more useful for automated construction of tight-binding models particularly for large-scale materials calculations.
title Optimization of Ab-Initio Based Tight-Binding Models
topic Materials Science
Computational Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.04861