We calculate the "head" element or the (0, 0)-element of the wave-vector and frequency-dependent dielectric matrix of bulk crystals via first-principles, all-electron Kohn-Sham states in the integral of the irreducible polarizability in the random phase approximation. We approximate the macroscopic "head" element of the inverse matrix by its reciprocal value, and integrate over frequencies and momenta to obtain the electronic energy loss of protons at low velocities. Numerical evaluation for diamond targets predicts that the band gap causes a strong non-linear reduction of the electronic stopping power at ion velocities below 0.2 atomic units.PACS numbers: 61.80. Jh, 34.50.Bw, 71.45.Gm
I. FORMULATION AND METHODThe objective of this research is a quantitative, firstprinciples description of the energy deposition by a bare ion in diamond. The energy loss per unit path length of a massive, punctiform, charged particle with charge number Z 1 to a target iswith v the projectile velocity in the target rest frame, e the elementary charge unit, and ǫ 0 the vacuum permittivity. For reciprocal lattice vectors G, K 0,0 is the G = G ′ = 0 ("head") component of the inverse dielectric matrix defined bywith respect to ǫ G,G ′ (k, ω), the wave-vector and frequency dependent microscopic dielectric matrix. In terms of the irreducible polarizability Π, the dielectric matrix isgiven in the Random Phase Approximation 2 (RPA) as a sum over all band pairs (ν, ν ′ ) and an integral over the first Brillouin zone (BZ)E ν,k are the band energies, and f ν,k are Fermi occupation numbers (f ν,k = 0 or 2 for E ν,k above or below the Fermi energy E F ). The matrix elements in Eq. (2) areWe determine the ground-state electronic structure of solids within Density Functional Theory (DFT) as established in the Kohn-Sham (KS) variational procedure and implemented in the computational package gtoff.
3The results of the all-electron, full-potential calculations are eigenfunctions ϕ ν,k (r), expressed as linear combination of Gaussian Type Orbitals (GTO's), and eigenvalues E ν,k .The Bloch functions are finally expanded in a (truncated) plane wave (PW) series,to represent m G as a simple sum over products of expansion coefficients u νk,G , 1 where V UC is the volume of a unit cell (UC). The equivalence of the GTO and PW representations is maintained by monitoring the accumulated norm for each |ν, k relative to the exact values,We subdivide the integration region of the integral (2) into k-space tetrahedra. Recursive further subdivision of a given tetrahedron into smaller tetrahedra is done if f νk − f ν ′ k+q is not constant over all four vertices. Next comes linearization of the product of the matrix elements in the numerator and of the energy denominator inside each tetrahedron for each ω. The resulting approximated integral is evaluated analytically.
1The product |q + G| 2 ǫ G,G ′ (q, ω) is calculated and, in compensation, the term q 2 in the denominator of Eq. (1) is dropped. The dielectric function is tabulated for q commensurate with the uni...