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Title: Petascale Orbital-Free Density Functional Theory Enabled by Small-Box Algorithms

Journal Article · · Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation
 [1];  [2];  [1];  [3];  [4]
  1. Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, United States
  2. State Key Laboratory of Superlattices and Microstructures, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 912, Beijing 100083, China
  3. Material Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, United States
  4. Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, United States; Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, United States

Orbital-free density functional theory (OFDFT) is a quantum-mechanics-based method that utilizes electron density as its sole variable. The main computational cost in OFDFT is the ubiquitous use of the fast Fourier transform (FFT), which is mainly adopted to evaluate the kinetic energy density functional (KEDF) and electron–electron Coulomb interaction terms. We design and implement a small-box FFT (SBFFT) algorithm to overcome the parallelization limitations of conventional FFT algorithms. We also propose real-space truncation of the nonlocal Wang–Teter KEDF kernel. The scalability of the SBFFT is demonstrated by efficiently simulating one full optimization step (electron density, energies, forces, and stresses) of 1,024,000 lithium (Li) atoms on up to 65,536 cores. We perform other tests using Li as a test material, including calculations of physical properties of different phases of bulk Li, geometry optimizations of nanocrystalline Li, and molecular dynamics simulations of liquid Li. All of the tests yield excellent agreement with the original OFDFT results, suggesting that the OFDFT-SBFFT algorithm opens the door to efficient first-principles simulations of materials containing millions of atoms.

Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF); UT-Battelle LLC/ORNL, Oak Ridge, TN (United States); Univ. of California, Oakland, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC)
DOE Contract Number:
AC05-00OR22725; AC02-05CH11231
OSTI ID:
1565446
Journal Information:
Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation, Vol. 12, Issue 6; ISSN 1549-9618
Publisher:
American Chemical Society
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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