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Perturbation calculation of thermodynamic density of states
G Brown1, T C Schulthess, D M Nicholson
1Computational Science and Mathematics Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37830, USA.
Abstract:
The density of states g (ε) is frequently used to calculate the temperature-dependent properties of a thermodynamic system. Here a derivation is given for calculating the warped density of states g*(ε) resulting from the addition of a perturbation. The method is validated for a classical Heisenberg model of bcc Fe and the errors in the free energy are shown to be second order in the perturbation. Taking the perturbation to be the difference between a first-principles quantum-mechanical energy and a corresponding classical energy, this method can significantly reduce the computational effort required to calculate g(ε) for quantum systems using the Wang-Landau approach.
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