English

SPARC-atomSFE: Spectral finite-element package for atomic structure calculations in density functional theory

Computational Physics 2026-05-19 v1 Atomic Physics

Abstract

We present SPARC-atomSFE, a spectral finite-element package for accurate and efficient atomic structure calculations within the framework of Kohn-Sham density functional theory. The package supports both all-electron and norm conserving pseudopotential calculations across a comprehensive hierarchy of exchange-correlation approximations, spanning local, semilocal, and nonlocal functionals. The latter includes hybrid functionals and the many-body random phase approximation, for which we implement both the generalized Kohn-Sham approach and the optimized effective potential (OEP) method, with OEP necessary for eigenvalue-dependent functionals. Spatial discretization is based on an adaptive grid with element nodes distributed according to the Legendre--Gauss--Lobatto scheme, high-order C0C^{0}-continuous Lagrange polynomial basis functions, and Gauss--Legendre quadrature for numerical integration. We present systematic convergence studies and identify the computational parameters required to achieve target accuracies. We validate the accuracy of SPARC-atomSFE through representative calculations spanning the various exchange-correlations approximations, obtaining results that generally agree with values in the literature to within 1 μHa1~\mu\text{Ha} or better.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.18488,
  title  = {SPARC-atomSFE: Spectral finite-element package for atomic structure calculations in density functional theory},
  author = {Qihao Cheng and Shubhang Krishnakant Trivedi and Phanish Suryanarayana},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.18488},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

25 pages, 6 figures, 3 tables