<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On Apr 20, 2011, at 10:21 PM, Stefano de Gironcoli wrote:</div><div><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">With QE I have always seen the energy to decrease when the cutoffs are<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">increased, but with VASP, I always see an oscillation in the total<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">energy<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">when the cutoff is incremented.<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">just guessing: it might be a consequence of real-space treatment of<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">augmentation<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">functions.<br></blockquote><br>actually it can happen for US pseudo, if the cutoff for the density is <br>not large enough, that the energy increases with increasing cutoff.. <br>just because the augmentation charges are not integrated correctly and <br>the error can have any sign. If ecutrho is sufficient to integrate <br>correctly augmentation charges the energy should be variational w.r.t. <br>ecutwfc .</div></blockquote><br></div><div>Just a short, half-philosphoc comment, in the hope to make the whole issue even more clear. DFT is variational with respect to the size of the 1-electron basis set (irrespective of the fact that ionic potentials are local or not), if the numerics of the calculation is otherwise well converged with respect to any possible parameter of the calculation. When it is not, no guarantee of variational bounds. This is obvious in a sense. Stealthy problems may arise when some of the auxiliary numerical parameters of the calculations are surreptitiously correlated with the size of the basis set (such as, e.g. the number of plane waves in the Fourier expansion of the [augmented] charge density or the number of mesh points used for the real-space integration of different functions).</div><div><br></div><div>Hope this halps</div><div>Stefano</div><div><br></div><div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; "><div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; ">---</span></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; ">Stefano Baroni - SISSA</span></font><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "> </span></font><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; ">&</span></font><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "> </span></font><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; ">DEMOCRITOS National Simulation Center - Trieste</span></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "><a href="http://stefano.baroni.me/">http://stefano.baroni.me</a> [+39] 040 3787 406 (tel) -528 (fax) / stefanobaroni (skype)</span></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; font-size: 12px; "><br style="font-size: 12px; "></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; min-height: 14px; font-size: 12px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; "><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; ">La morale est une logique de l'action comme la logique est une morale de la pensée - Jean Piaget</span></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "><br></span></font></div></span></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; ">Please, if possible, don't</span></font><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "> </span></font><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; ">send me MS Word or PowerPoint attachments</span></font></div><div style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; font-size: 14px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; ">Why? See:</span></font><font class="Apple-style-span" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "> </span></font><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#0023E9" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 12px; "><a href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html">http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html</a></span></font></div></div><div><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#0023E9" size="3"><br></font></div></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
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