Primitive to conventional geometry projection for efficient phonon transport calculations

Abstract

The primitive Wigner-Seitz cell and corresponding first Brillouin zone (FBZ) are typically used in calculations of lattice vibrational and transport properties as they contain the smallest number of degrees of freedom and thus have the cheapest computational cost. However, in complex materials, the FBZ can take on irregular shapes where lattice symmetries are not apparent. Thus, conventional cells (with more atoms and regular shapes) are often used to describe materials, though dynamical and transport calculations are more expensive. Here we discuss an efficient anharmonic lattice dynamic method that maps conventional cell dynamics to primitive cell dynamics based on translational symmetries. This leads to phase interference conditions that act like conserved quantum numbers and a conservation rule for phonon scattering that is hidden in conventional dynamics which significantly reduces computational cost. We demonstrate this method for phonon transport in a variety of materials with inputs from first-principles calculations and attribute its efficiency to reduced scattering phase space and fewer summations in scattering matrix element calculations.