Dipole moment tutorial

Requirements

Software components

  • nanotools

  • RESCU+

Pseudopotentials

I will need the following pseudopotentials.

  • H_AtomicData.mat

  • O_AtomicData.mat

Let’s copy them from the pseudo database to the current working directory and export RESCUPLUS_PSEUDO=$PWD.

References

  • Wikipedia contributors. “Electric dipole moment.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 14 Aug. 2021. Web. 20 Aug. 2021.

Briefing

In this tutorial, I show how to calculate the dipole moment of a water molecule.

The dipole moment is defined as

$$ \mathbf{p}(\mathbf{r}) = \int\limits_{V} \rho(\mathbf{r}’), \left(\mathbf{r}’ - \mathbf{r}\right) \ d^3 \mathbf{r}’ $$

where $\rho$ is the total charge in the system, i.e. the electronic charge plus the ionic charge from the pseudo-ion cores. Note that the calculation of the dipole requires a reference point $\mathbf{r}$ and the dipole may depend on the position of that center.

Setup

Create the Python script etot.py with the following content (see the tutorial on TotalEnergy)

from nanotools import Atoms, Cell, System, TotalEnergy
import numpy as np

xyz = """3
Water molecule
O          8.00000           8.0000    8.1178
H          8.00000           8.7554    7.5288
H          8.00000           7.2446    7.5288
"""
with open("h2o.xyz", "w") as f:
   f.write(xyz)
atoms = Atoms(positions="h2o.xyz")
cell = Cell(avec = np.diag([16,16,16]), resolution=0.1)
sys = System(atoms=atoms, cell=cell)
calc = TotalEnergy(sys)
calc.solve()

and dip.py

from nanotools import Dipole
calc = Dipole.from_totalenergy("nano_scf_out.json")
print(calc.get_dipole_moment())           # e * Ang
print(calc.get_dipole_moment()/0.2081943) # debye

Explanations

Here is a high level view of the calculation workflow:

  1. Perform a total energy calculation.

  2. Perform a dipole calculation.

Total energy calculation

This step is performed to obtain the ground state density. Simply execute etot.py. For additional details on total energy calculations, refer the to tutorial on TotalEnergy.

Dipole calculation

In this step, a Dipole object is create passing the path to the total energy results to from_totalenergy. The dipole moment is obtained simply invoking get_dipole_moment. It is returned in units of e$\cdot$Ang. The value in debye is obtained dividing by 0.2081943.

[-7.15008622e-16  8.51566954e-16  3.38609613e-01]
[-5.05106647e-12 -4.81216468e-12  1.62641154e+00]

The value of 1.63 is comparable with the classical electrostatic value of 1.84 given by

$$ p = 2\cdot 1.5 \cos\left(\frac{104.5^\circ}{2}\right) $$