『Photoinduced reaction dynamics of nanocarbons』
Nanocarbons such as fullerene, carbon nanotube, and graphene are the fundamental materials for carbon-based nanotechnologies. Their optical and electronic properties heavily depend on their size and shape. In order to realize single-molecule scale structural engineering of nanocarbons using laser irradiation, we quantum-chemically investigated the mechanism of the photoinduced reaction dynamics of nanocarbons both in energy and time domains.
We first investigated the reaction paths of Stone?Wales rearrangement (SWR), i.e., π/2 rotation of two carbon atoms with respect to the midpoint of the bond, in graphene and carbon nanotube at the MS-CASPT2//SA-CASSCF level of multi-reference molecular orbital theory [1]. We found that the vibronic (electron-phonon) coupling play a crucial role to reduce the effective reaction barriers of the photoinduced defect formation of nanographene.
We next investigated that the fragmentation dynamics of the highly charged fullerene cation C60q+ (q = 20-60) produced by the irradiation of x-ray free electron laser pulse using on-the-fly classical trajectory calculations combined with density functional based tight-binding theory. We found that a two-step explosion mechanism governs the fragmentation dynamics [2]: C60q+ firstly ejects singly and multiply charged fast atomic cations Cz+ (z ? 1) to reduce its strong intramolecular Coulomb repulsion on a timescale of 10 fs. Thermal (statistical) evaporations of slow atomic and molecular fragments from the remaining core cluster subsequently occur on a timescale of 100 fs to 1 ps.
I will also briefly discuss our recent results on the real-time imaging of the near-/mid-IR induced coherent vibration of C60, which is considered as the initial step of the photoinduced fragmentation of C60 [3]
References:
[1] K. Yamazaki et al., J. Phys. Chem. A 116, 11441 (2012).
[2] K. Yamazaki et al., J. Chem. Phys. 141, 121105 (2014).
[3] K. Yamazaki et al., to be submitted.
『Recent Progress in a Calculation Method of Quasiparticle Spectra』
Photoelectron spectra represent the total energy difference between the N-electron system and the (N±1)-electron system, which give the basic idea of the quasiparticle (QP) energies.
Very recently, we found that the rigorous formulation involving the QP energies, the QP wave functions, and the QP equation can be applied not only to the N-electron ground state but also to any M-electron excited eigenstate [1]. Focusing on this topic, I will explain our recent achievement of the self-consistent GWΓ calculation [2], the GW without Bethe-Salpeter equation method for photoabsorption spectra [3], and the TDGW method for excited state dynamics simulations [4]. These calculations were carried out by using the all-electron mixed basis approach (program name TOMBO), which uses both numerical atomic orbitals and plane waves [5].
[1] K. Ohno, S. Ono, and T. Isobe, J. Chem. Phys. 146, 084108 (2017).
[2] R. Kuwahara, Y. Noguchi, and K. Ohno, Phys. Rev. B 94, 121116(R) (2016).
[3] T. Isobe, R. Kuwahara, and K. Ohno, to be submitted.
[4] T. N. Pham, S. Ono, and K. Ohno, J. Chem. Phys. 144, 144309 (2016).
[5] S. Ono, Y. Noguchi, R. Sahara, Y. Kawazoe, and K. Ohno, Comp. Phys. Comm 189, 20 (2015).
『Skyrmion crystal as a promising thermoelectric converter: A prediction from first-principles』
The anomalous Nernst effect (ANE), a heat-to-electric conversion in mutually transverse directions, can be driven by an emergent magnetic field B originating from inhomogeneous magnetic moments in solids. Large ANE has been experimentally confirmed in various ferromagnets, and only very recently, also in an antiferromagnet [1]. Here we theoretically propose that, the Skyrmion crystal (SkX), in which magnetic topological objects Skyrmions are crystallized, is another candidate to host large ANE.
We have found through first-principles calculations on a single s-orbital model using the package OpenMX [2] and Wannier90 [3] that, in a two dimensional SkX phase a large ANE would appear when chemical potential μ is properly tuned (Figure) [4]. This was interpreted as due to its characteristic distribution of Chern numbers among the bands (each Chern number representing quantized flux of B field through each electronic band in momentum space).
Following such an observation in the simplest model of square SkX [4], our subsequent computations on a more realistic oxide film also predict large ANE.
This motivates further studies of ANE in the SkX family, in quest of better thermoelectric materials that exploit this effect.
[1] M. Ikhlas et al., Nature Physics (2017) doi:10.1038/nphys4181.
[2] T. Ozaki et al., Open source package for Material eXplorer, http://www.openmx-square.org/
[3] A. A. Mostofi et al., http://www.wannier.org.
[4] Y. P. Mizuta and F. Ishii, Scientific Reports 6, 28076 (2016).
『Origin of the spin reorientation transitions in antiferromagnetic MnPt-based alloys』
Antiferromagnetic MnPt exhibits a spin reorientation transition (SRT) as a function of temperature, and offstoichiometric Mn-Pt alloys also display SRTs as a function of concentration. Here we describe the origin of these SRTs using first-principles calculations based on the coherent potential approximation, treating chemical and thermally-induced spin disorder on equal footing. We find that the experimentally observed SRTs are related to specific features in the band structure, and we perform a detailed analysis of the effects of temperature and concentration on the magnetocrystalline anisotropy.
Reference:
P.-H. Chang, T. Markussen, S. Smidstrup, K. Stokbro, and B.K. Nikolic, Phys. Rev. B 92, 201406(R) (2015).
J.M. Marmolejo-Tejada, K. Dolui, P. Lazic, P.-H. Chang, S. Smidstrup, D. Stradi, K. Stokbro, B.K. Nikolic, arXiv:1701.00462.
『Absolute binding energies of core levels in solids from first principles』
The X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) is one of the most important and widely used techniques in studying chemical composition and electronic states in the vicinity of surfaces of materials. In spite of the long history of XPS and its importance in materials science, a general method has not been developed so far to calculate absolute binding energies for both insulators and metals, including multiple splittings due to chemical shift, spin-orbit coupling, and exchange interaction, on equal footing.
Here, we propose a general method to calculate absolute binding energies of core levels in metals and insulators, based on a penalty functional and an exact Coulomb cutoff method in a framework of the density functional theory [1]. It is demonstrated that the absolute binding energies of core levels for both metals and insulators are calculated by the proposed method in a mean absolute (relative) error of 0.4 eV (0.16 %) for eight cases compared to experimental values measured with XPS within a generalized gradient approximation to the exchange-correlation functional. Recent applications of the method including silicene [2], borophene, and platinum atoms will also be discussed in comparison with experimental data together with analysis of the initial and final state effects based on an energy decomposition method.
[1] T. Ozaki and C.-C. Lee, Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 026401 (2017).
[2] C.-C. Lee, J. Yoshinobu, K. Mukai, S. Yoshimoto, H. Ueda, R. Friedlein, A. Fleurence, Y. Yamada-Takamura, and T. Ozaki, Phys. Rev. B 95, 115437 (2017).