Hi Gregorio,

On Thu, Jan 7, 2010 at 1:02 PM,  <[email protected]> wrote:
> I am a new user of SIESTA.

It's ok, everyone has been one at some point :D

> I am trying to calculated the band structure a
> pi-conjugated polymer. I have searched in the SIESTA-L, I have found that
> I need a blocklabel such as
>
> BandLinesScale  ReciprocalLatticeVectors
>
> %block BandLines
> 1    0.0   0.0  0.0   # Gamma-point
> 20  0.5   0.0  0.0   # X-point
> etc
> %endblock BandLines
>
> I have to add:
> WriteBands      True

If the manual says so... (really, I don't remember it by heart).

>
> I have some questions:
>
> 1)I noted that BandLinesScales can be scaled by ReciprocalLatticeVectors
> or pi/2, which is the differece?

A huge one when it comes to specifying the points to be plotted, but
the results are the same. For the first, you can determine at which
points your band structure will be written as a fraction of the
reciprocal lattice vectors themselves, whereas in the second, you will
have actual cartesian coordinates in k-space, but scaled by the factor
pi/a. As an example, suppose you have a 2D cell in real space with
LatticeConstant A, such that


LatticeConstant       A  Ang
%block LatticeVectors
1.000  0.000   0.000
0.000  5.000   0.000
0.000  0.000  50.000
%endblock LatticeVectors

The reciprocal lattice vectors as siesta calculates would then be

b1=(2*pi/A,0) and b2=(0,2*pi/5A)

(b3 is close to zero, so I won't take it into account from now on). So
now suppose that the points of interest to you are the middle of the
largest side **of the BZ** (let's call it M), one of its corners
(let's call it Y), and the Gamma point. In the first case
(ReciprocalLatticeVectors), these three coordinates can be written as

Gamma=(0,0)
M=(0.5,0)
Y=(0.5,0.5)

(remember that the Brillouin zone is the Wigner-Seitz cell in
reciprocal space!). In the second case (scaled by pi/A), you'd have

Gamma=(0,0)
M=(1.,0)
Y=(1.0,1/5)

get it? It's just two different ways of expressing the same thing,
whatever is easier for you. Often it is easier to use the fractional
coordinates in k-space (ReciprocalLatticeVectors).

>
> 2) The first colum indicates the grid between  two consecutive points. How
> Can I know what value Must I use?
> What k-points (gamma, x, L, etc) Must I use?
>
> Does it related with WirteKpoints, WreteEigenvalues and Writekbands?
>

That depends on the symmetry of your system. In your case, plotting a
band structure only makes sense if you have a crystal or an infinte
polymer chain - in this latter case, all you have to do is plot the
structure along the reciprocal lattice vector corresponding to the
polymer chain's length. There are some internet resources on
crystallography that give you a set of high-symmetry k-points for many
lattices, I think the Bilbao Crystallographic Server is completely
open for everyone.

> 3) Finally. I know about GnuPlot, Does anyone tell me some program for
> view the band structures? Does some program for Windows operative system?

Gnuplot for Windows? :) (It does exist...)

Check the siesta documentation for the bands files, it's pretty
straightforward to plot them using gnuplot.

Marcos

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