Exploring connections between statistical mechanics and Green's functions for realistic systems. Temperature dependent electronic entropy and internal energy from a self-consistent second-order Green's function

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how self-consistent second-order Green's function methods can evaluate temperature-dependent thermodynamic properties and phase stability in realistic systems like 1D hydrogen and boron nitride, connecting Green's functions with thermodynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a self-consistent Green's function approach to compute thermodynamic quantities at finite temperature for realistic systems, revealing phase stability and spectral evolution.

Findings

Multiple phases identified in 1D hydrogen at various conditions.

GF2 qualitatively captures temperature effects on band gap in BN.

Most stable phase determined via Helmholtz energy analysis.

Abstract

Including finite-temperature effects from the electronic degrees of freedom in electronic structure calculations of semiconductors and metals is desired; however, in practice it remains exceedingly difficult when using zero-temperature methods, since these methods require an explicit evaluation of multiple excited states in order to account for any finite-temperature effects. Using a Matsubara Green's function formalism remains a viable alternative, since in this formalism it is easier to include thermal effects and to connect the dynamic quantities such as the self-energy with static thermodynamic quantities such as the Helmholtz energy, entropy, and internal energy. However, despite the promising properties of this formalism, little is know about the multiple solutions of the non-linear equations present in the self-consistent Matsubara formalism and only a few cases involving a full Coulomb Hamiltonian were investigated in the past. Here, to shed some light onto the iterative nature of the Green's function solutions, we self-consistently evaluate the thermodynamic quantities for a one-dimensional (1D) hydrogen solid at various interatomic separations and temperatures using the self-energy approximated to second-order (GF2). At many points in the phase diagram of this system, multiple phases such as a metal and an insulator exist, and we are able to determine the most stable phase from the analysis of Helmholtz energies. Additionally, we show the evolution of the spectrum of 1D boron nitride (BN) to demonstrate that GF2 is capable of qualitatively describing the temperature effects influencing the size of the band gap.