GGA energy functionals

In principle you may specify different functionals to be used for the potential, which determines the self-consistent charge density, and for the energy expression that is used to evaluate the (XC part of the) energy of the charge density. To be consistent, one should generally apply the same functional to evaluate the potential and energy respectively. Two reasons, however, may lead one to do otherwise:

• The evaluation of the GGA part in the potential is more time-consuming than LDA. The effect of the GGA term in the potential on the self-consistent charge density is often not very large. From the point of view of computational efficiency it may, therefore, be attractive to solve the SCF equations at the LDA level (i.e. not including GGA terms in the potential), and to apply the full expression, including GGA terms, to the energy evaluation a posteriori: post-SCF.
• A particular XC functional may have only an implementation for the potential, but not for the energy (or vice versa). This is a rather special case, intended primarily for fundamental research of Density Functional Theory, rather than for run-of-the-mill production runs.

One possibility is to calculate a whole list of post-SCF energy functionals using the METAGGA keyword, see next section. For some functionals the next possibility is enough. One has to specify different functionals for potential and energy evaluations respectively, using:

XC
 {LDA {Apply} LDA {Stoll}}
 {GGA {Apply} GGA}
end

Apply

States whether the functional defined on the pertaining line will be used self-consistently (in the SCF-potential), or only post-SCF, i.e. to evaluate the XC energy corresponding to the charge density. The value of apply must be SCF or Energy. A value postSCF will also be accepted and is equivalent to Energy. A value Potential will also be accepted and is equivalent to SCF. For each record separately the default (if no Apply value is given in that record) is SCF. For each of the two terms (LDA, GGA) in the functional: if no record with Energy specification is found in the data block, the evaluation of the XC energy will use the same functional as is applied for the potential.

LDA, GGA

See the XC potential section for all possible values.