Calculation of nanotubes by utilizing the helical symmetry properties

Project reference: 1704

In calculations of nanotubes prevail methods based on a one-dimensional translational symmetry using a huge unit cell. A pseudo two-dimensional approach, when the inherent helical symmetry of general chiralitynanotubes is exploited, has been limited to simple approximate model Hamiltonians. Currently, we are developing a new unique codefor fully ab initio calculations of nanotubes that explicitly uses the helical symmetry properties. Implementation is based on a formulation in two-dimensional reciprocal space where one dimension is continuous whereas the second one is discrete. Independent particle quantum chemistry methods, such as Hartee-Fock and/or DFT or simple post Hartree-Fock  MP2are used to calculate the band structures.

Student is expected to cooperate on the parallelization of this newly developed implementation and/or on a performance testing for simple general nanotube model cases. Message Passing Interface (MPI) will be used as the primary tool to parallelize the code.

The aim of this work is to implement MPI parallelization to enable highly accurate calculations for the band structures of nanotubes on distributed nodes, with distributed memory. The current code is limited to shared memory, and distribution of the memory usage over the nodes would be desirable at least at the level of outer loops. On the other hand the second level parallelization in inner loops over the processors of individual nodes would certainly enhance the performance together with a combination with using threaded BLAS routines.

By improving the performance of our new software we will open up new possibilities for tractable highly accurate calculations of energies and band structures for nanotubes with predictive power and with facilitated band topology whose interpretation is much more transparent than in the conventionally used one-dimensional approach. We believe that this methodology soon becomes a standard tool for in silico design and investigation in both the academic and commercial sectors.

General case nanotube with helical translational symmetry

Project Mentor: Prof. Dr. Jozef Noga, DrSc.

Site Co-ordinator: Mgr. Lukáš Demovič, PhD.

Learning Outcomes:

The student will familiarize himself with MPI programming and testing, as well as with ideas of efficient implementation of complex tensor-contraction based HPC applications. A basic understanding of treating the translationally periodic systems in physics will be gained along with the detailed knowledge of profiling tools and parallelization techniques.

Student Prerequisites (compulsory): 

Basic knowledge of MPI and Fortran.

Student Prerequisites (desirable): 

BLAS libraries and other HPC tools, knowledge of C/C++.

Training Materials:

Articles and test examples to be provided according to an actual student’s profile and skills

Workplan:

Weeks 1-3: training; profiling of the software and design simple MPI implementation, Deliver Plan at the end of week 3. Weeks 4-7: implementation, optimization and extensive testing/benchmarking of the code, week 8: report completion and presentation preparation

Final Product Description: 

The resulting code will be capable of successfully and more efficiently completing the electronic structure calculations of nanotubes with a much simplified and transparent topology of the band structure.

Adapting the Project: Increasing the Difficulty:

A more efficient implementation with the hybrid model using both MPI and Open Multi-Processing  (OpenMP)

Resources:

The student will need access to Fortran and a C++ compiler as well as MPI and OpenMPenvironment  which can be provided by the hostCC SAS

Organisation:
Computing Centre of the Slovak Academy of Sciences