Nuclear quantum effects in ab initio dynamics: theory and experiments for lithium imide

Abstract

Owing to their small mass, hydrogen atoms exhibit strong quantum behavior even at room temperature. Including these effects in first principles calculations is challenging, because of the huge computational effort required by conventional techniques. Here we present the first ab-initio application of a recently-developed stochastic scheme, which allows to approximate nuclear quantum effects inexpensively. The proton momentum distribution of lithium imide, a material of interest for hydrogen storage, was experimentally measured by inelastic neutron scattering experiments and compared with the outcome of quantum thermostatted ab initio dynamics. We obtain favorable agreement between theory and experiments for this purely quantum mechanical property, thereby demonstrating that it is possible to improve the modelling of complex hydrogen-containing materials without additional computational effort.

References in corpus (6)

• Nuclear quantum effects in water
• Nuclear quantum effects in solids using a colored-noise thermostat
• Colored-noise thermostats à la carte
• Langevin equation with colored noise for constant-temperature molecular dynamics simulations
• Direct Observation of Tunnelling in KDP Using Neutron Compton Scattering
• Displaced path integral formulation for the momentum distribution of quantum particles

Cited by in corpus (10)

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• Direct Measurement of Competing Quantum Effects on the Kinetic Energy of Heavy Water upon Melting
• Converged Colored Noise Path Integral Molecular Dynamics Study of the Zundel Cation down to Ultra-low Temperatures at Coupled Cluster Accuracy
• Momentum distribution, vibrational dynamics and the potential of mean force in ice
• Static disorder and structural correlations in the low temperature phase of lithium imide
• Thermal conductivity of Li${}_3$PS${}_4$ solid electrolytes with ab initio accuracy