BerkeleyGW: A massively parallel computer package for the calculation of the quasiparticle and optical properties of materials and nanostructures

BerkeleyGW is a massively parallel computational package for electron excited-state properties that is based on the many-body perturbation theory employing the ab initio GW and GW plus Bethe–Salpeter equation methodology. It can be used in conjunction with many density-functional theory codes for ground-state properties, including PARATEC, PARSEC, Quantum ESPRESSO, SIESTA, and Octopus. The package can be used to compute the electronic and optical properties of a wide variety of material systems from bulk semiconductors and metals to nanostructured materials and molecules. The package scales to 10 000s of CPUs and can be used to study systems containing up to 100s of atoms.Program summaryProgram title: BerkeleyGWCatalogue identifier: AELG_v1_0Program summary URL:http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/summaries/AELG_v1_0.htmlProgram obtainable from: CPC Program Library, Queenʼs University, Belfast, N. IrelandLicensing provisions: Open source BSD License. See code for licensing details.No. of lines in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 576 540No. of bytes in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 110 608 809Distribution format: tar.gzProgramming language: Fortran 90, C, C++, Python, Perl, BASHComputer: Linux/UNIX workstations or clustersOperating system: Tested on a variety of Linux distributions in parallel and serial as well as AIX and Mac OSXRAM: (50–2000) MB per CPU (Highly dependent on system size)Classification: 7.2, 7.3, 16.2, 18External routines: BLAS, LAPACK, FFTW, ScaLAPACK (optional), MPI (optional). All available under open-source licenses.Nature of problem: The excited state properties of materials involve the addition or subtraction of electrons as well as the optical excitations of electron–hole pairs. The excited particles interact strongly with other electrons in a material system. This interaction affects the electronic energies, wavefunctions and lifetimes. It is well known that ground-state theories, such as standard methods based on density-functional theory, fail to correctly capture this physics.Solution method: We construct and solve the Dysonʼs equation for the quasiparticle energies and wavefunctions within the GW approximation for the electron self-energy. We additionally construct and solve the Bethe–Salpeter equation for the correlated electron–hole (exciton) wavefunctions and excitation energies.Restrictions: The material size is limited in practice by the computational resources available. Materials with up to 500 atoms per periodic cell can be studied on large HPCs.Additional comments: The distribution file for this program is approximately 110 Mbytes and therefore is not delivered directly when download or E-mail is requested. Instead a html file giving details of how the program can be obtained is sent.Running time: 1–1000 minutes (depending greatly on system size and processor number).