When? Aug 27th, 2020
Where? Virtually on zoom https://lbnl.zoom.us/j/92821576050
Organizers: Yang Ha (yangha@lbl.gov), Yi-sheng Liu, Feipeng Yang, Wanli Yang
Greetings from ALS! Welcome everyone to our first ALS users' meeting DFT workshop.
In this one day workshop, we wish to teach you some background knowledge about DFT, and you will have some hands on experience with a list of example calculations, including geometry optimization, frequency calculation and time dependent DFT to simulate spectra.
Our examples will be run using ORCA. Other software such as Gaussian or ADF will be similar. For more information about ORCA, please visit the official forum https://orcaforum.kofo.mpg.de/app.php/portal
For the hands on practice, you can either run it on our high performance computing cluster (preferred), or you can install and run ORCA on your local computer. Please check the to do list below, to have all the software installed before the workshop.
To do list before you arrive
Stay tuned by checking emails about the virtual machine access and other useful information. If you intend to run the jobs on our cluster, please make sure you get your login information and are able to login to your assigned computing cluster. If you encounter any issues, please contact us ahead of time.
Go to the ORCA website https://orcaforum.kofo.mpg.de/app.php/portal, and sign up with your email, so you can have access to download files.
The ORCA enhanced version of Avogadro is a great GUI to visualize your output results. Please download the corresponding version (PC / Mac) and install it on your local computer. (Problems?)
You could also download the ORCA manual from their forum. It is very well documented and always a great resource to refer to.
If you intend to run ORCA on your local machine, please also download the corresponding version, and install it.
In order to access our computing cluster, you will need a terminal. For Mac users, you can do so by the Terminal APP. For PC users, I personally recommend xshell (https://www.netsarang.com/en/xshell/). They have the free versions for home and school use. Or, you can use putty (https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/latest.html), which does not need your email address.
For file transfer, Mac users can still do command lines in terminal, but to have a better GUI, I recommend xftp (https://www.netsarang.com/en/xftp/). It has both PC and Mac version. Again, it is free for home and school use, with limited threads. You can also use psftp if you want to keep your privacy.
To build your own molecule, you can use your favorite software if you have. Avogadro can do the job. There is another open source software called jmol that is simple but works well. http://jmol.sourceforge.net/
If possible, please get familiar with some basic Linux commands and the vi text editor.
Detailed schedule (Pacific Time)
8:00 Greetings and warm up
8:30 Presentation - What can DFT do for us? (Three examples from fundamental physics, biochemistry and material science) - Yang Ha (Advanced Light Source, LBL)
9:30 General introduction of ORCA, and start your first calculation
10:00 Demo & Hands on session on starting your job and geometry optimization
11:00 Presentation - Data collection and process at ALS - Feipeng Yang (Joint Center for Energy Storage Research)
11:30 Lunch Break
12:30 Presentation - - Hrant Hratchian (UC Merced)
13:30 Demo & Hands on session on Frequency calculations and XAS simulations
16:30 Wrap up