Kohn-Sham potential with discontinuity for band gap materials

Abstract

We model a Kohn-Sham potential with the discontinuity at integer particle numbers starting from the approximation by (GLLB) Gritsenko et al. [Phys. Rev. A 51, 1944 (1995)]. We evaluate the Kohn-Sham gap and the discontinuity to obtain the quasiparticle gap. This allows us to compare the Kohn-Sham gaps to those obtained by accurate many-body perturbation-theory-based optimized potential methods. In addition, the resulting quasiparticle band gap is compared to experimental gaps. In the GLLB model potential, the exchange-correlation hole is modeled using a generalized gradient approximation (GGA) energy density and the response of the hole-to-density variations is evaluated by using the common-denominator approximation and homogeneous electron-gas-based assumptions. In our modification, we have chosen the PBEsol potential as the GGA to model the exchange hole and add a consistent correlation potential. The method is implemented in the GPAW code, which allows efficient parallelization to study large systems. A fair agreement for Kohn-Sham and the quasiparticle band gaps with semiconductors and other band gap materials is obtained with a potential which is as fast as GGA to calculate.