XCrySDen --
(X-Window) CRYstalline Structures and DENsities

[Figure]
Home | About | Description | Documentation | Download | News | Links
Sies2xsf: Siesta to XSF transforming tools

Table of Contents

Introduction

Viewing crystal structures

Viewing data stored on the grid spanning the simulation cell

Wavefunction plotting

Fermi surface plotting

Animations of molecular dynamics

Vizualization of phonons

Introduction

README to the Sies2xsf selection of routines written by Andrei Postnikov (apostnik@uos.de)

This is Version_0.3 as of March 2006, including the Makefile and a
bunch of Fortran90 sources to build the following executables:
eig2bxsf : to plot Fermi surfaces; md2axsf : to vizualise molecular
dynamics or relaxation history; rho2xsf : to plot charge density or
spin density; vib2xsf : to vizualize vibration modes; xv2xsf : to
vizualize the crystal structure.
  
The set is for transforming SIESTA properties files into input files
for the XCrySDen package. XCrySDen is being developed by Anton Kokalj
at the Jozef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana, Slovenia.  XCrySDen is
released under the GNU General Public License, its web site is
http://www.xcrysden.org/ It offers a straightforward installation
under Unix/Linux, easy user's interface and fascinating graphics,
enabling to manipulate crystal structures and their 2-dim. and
3-dim. functions as 2-dim. plots or 3-dim. isosurfaces. Its input data
formats are simple and well documented on the XCrySDen site [ Home
-> Documentation -> Description of XCrySDen's XSF format ] .
The XCrySDen input files are human-readable, and one can add comments
(the lines beginning with # ) at the beginning of each file (in fact,
between sections within the file as well).

The need of 3-dimensional manipulation of Siesta data seems so far to
fall into six categories, all of which can be handled by XCrySDen:

1. Viewing crystal structures.

2. Viewing data stored on the grid spanning the simulation cell:
  RHO   (switch SaveRho );
  IORHO (switch SaveDeltaRho );
  VH    (switch SaveElectrostaticPotential );
  VT    (switch SaveTotalPotential );
  IOCH  (switch SaveIonicCharge );
  TOCH  (switch SaveTotalCharge );
  LDOS  (block LocalDensityOfStates )
These data are written in subr. iorho (iorho.F) unformatted, and
post-processing recommended by the program plrho. The present script
rho2xsf offers a convenient alternative.

3. Viewing data stored as decomposed over basis functions,
   e.g. wavefunctions.

4. Viewing Fermi surfaces.

5. Viewing dynamical animations after SIESTA MD or CG runs.

6. Vizualization of phonon modes, obtained by vibrator (an auxiliary
   program by Pablo Ordejon, Util/Vibra/Vibra/vibrator )


Viewing crystal structures


-----  TASK 1 (just basic viewing) ------------------------------------
may be good for checking that Siesta has 'understood' the structure
input as intended, to check the slab or cluster geometry in the
defined cell, etc. It is achieved by a very simple script xv2xsf which
asks for the SystemLabel and converts the XV file 1:1 into the
XCrysDen format, with unit cell and atoms.  Of course the XV file must
exist.

Viewing data stored on the grid spanning the simulation cell


-----  TASKS 1 and 2 (Atoms in the box and functions on the grid) -----
are in principle covered by very good utility program Denchar written
by Javier Junquera and Pablo Ordejon ( $SIESTA_DIR/Util/Denchar/... )
Denchar helps to define 2-dim or 3-dim orthogonal region, within which
the atoms and spatial functions are stored, e.g. in Gaussian cube
format.  The Gaussian cube format can be read by XCrySDen.  The
unconveniences of Denchar (Version 1.2.1) are: 

i) only orthogonal region is allowed; 

ii) many separate output files are created, i.e. 3 for charge density
in spin-polarized calculation;

iii) there seems to be a bug (or a feature?) in selecting which atoms
to plot: only those from the principal (periodic) unit cell which fall
into the selected region are plotted, without trying lattice
translations. The plot region might be selected such that one needs
lattice translations to recover all atoms in it. Some atoms therefore
may be missing in the Denchar plot.  (However, 3-dim properties are
constructued correctly, including translations.  Also the "missing
atoms" problem can be handled by introducing a general shift by
specifying a block Atomic_Coordinates_Origin in the Siesta input).

My program rho2xsf allows (and demands) to choose an "output box" as
an arbitrary parallelepiped, defined by its origin and three spanning
vectors. This box may be of course chosen identically with the unit
cell. The positions of atoms and grid properties will be then
recovered throughout the output box, taking into account lattice
translations.  All spin-resolved properties may be put into a single
file and then manipulated (taken with different weights, added,
subtracted) within XCrySDen.  rho2xsf works interactively and must be
started without passing any parameters to it. It uses the .XV file (to
plot the atoms in the selected region, if nothing else) and, if
required, the files with 3-dim properties (.RHO, .LDOS, etc.) The
output will be the .XSF file which can be directly read and worked on
by XCrySDen.

Note that XCrySDen permits plotting isosurfaces on non-orthogonal
grids, as well as contours and color encoding of the 3-dim property.

The way to use the generated .XSF file: 

Choose in the XCrySDen Menu: File -> Open Structure -> Open XSF
or launching: xcrysden --xsf < XSF file >

This reads in crystal structure information and shows the atoms of a
unit cell.  If there is a scalar field (3-dim. property) an the XSF
file, the submenu "Tools" of the XCrySDen main menu shows an active
entry "Data Grid", which opens a map of grid data available in he XSF
file.  Choose a Block (if there are many, like LDOS, RHO etc.) to
plot, and within the Block one can activate-deactivate Sub-blocks and
sum their contents up with arbitrary "Multiply factor"s (in the
windows).  rho2xsf makes two blocks whenever there are two spins in
the Siesta property files. Note that XCrySDen activates by default
only the first Sub-block. One may wish to activate both (for summing
over spins) and e.g. set "Multiply factor"s in the second Sub-block to
-1.0 (for analyzing spin density).

Note that rho2xsf makes unformatted read-in, according to the sequence
of (unformatted) records done in iorho.F. Therefore in the future - in
case of problems - one might need to check the consistency of record
sequences.  Moreover it is ESSENTIAL to compile rho2xsf.f using the
same compiler and parameters as for Siesta (apart from parallelization
issues), to ensure the consistency of unformatted record lengths:
there are variables defined as real and as double precision in both
rho2xsf.f and iorho.F, and compiler settings may influence the
actually used word lengths, e.g. imposing double precision throughout.


Wavefunction plotting


-------------  TASK 3 (Wavefunction plotting) --------------------------
is well handled by Denchar. The only annoyance is the abovementioned
bug/feature that the atoms from the original unit cell are not
translated over the whole plotting region. This is difficult to
correct, because it would involved many changes over several places in
Denchar.  My suggestion is to live with this, adopting if necessary
the following trick: 

i) run Denchar and obtain output in the Gaussian cube format;

ii) open it with XCrySDen and save in the native .xsf format;

iii) run rho2xsf on the existing .XV file, passing the description of
the plotting region (origin and three spanning vectors) consistently
with that used in Denchar. Save the result in the .xsf format;

iv) paste this latter part (number of atoms with their positions) in
place of atomic parts in all previously stored .xsf files with
wavefunctions. Many files with wavefunctions may be glued together as
a sequence of 2D or 3D blocks in the same .xsf file.

Fermi surface plotting


-------------  TASK 4 (Fermi surface plotting) -------------------------

There is a special format for this in XCrySDen (BXSF)
invoked from the XCrySDen Menu: File -> Open Structure -> Open BXSF
or launching: xcrysden --bxsf < BXSF file >

The file is produced by the program ene2bxsf, which manipulates the
eigenvalues previously calculated by Siesta on a (fine enough) k-mesh.
As XCrySDen demands the k-mesh to include the Gamma point, this
outlaws the use of a shifted k-mesh in Siesta, and also the use of
common kgrid_cutoff, because it introduces shifter k-mesh by default
(or so it seems). Therefore one must explicitly give number of
divisions along three reciprocal vectors in the kgrid_Monkhorst_Pack
block, e.g.
%block kgrid_Monkhorst_Pack
 24  0  0    0.
  0 24  0    0.
  0  0 24    0.
%endblock kgrid_Monkhorst_Pack 

The script must be started in the directory which contains the files
from a Siesta calculation; after inquiring for the Siesta SystemLabel,
the script opens the following files:

...XV   (to read the lattice vectors),
...KP   (to read the list of irreducible k-points),
...EIG  (to read the eigenvalues over k-points and bands).

The resulting file(s) 

...BXSF (two for a spin-polarized calculation) 

contain(s) the ordered list of eigenvalues, band by band, over a full
k-mesh, consistently with the rules for constructing bandgrids
for XCrySDen, see   www.xcrysden.org
  -> Documentation 
    -> Specification of the XSF Format
      -> Bandgrids (visualization of Fermi surfaces).

The visualization proceeds by invoking XCrySDen, File -> Open
Structure -> Open BXSF then confirm (or change) the Fermi energy,
select bands for Fermi surface drawing.  The access to the graphic
menu for visual control is via the right mouse button. See details in
the XCrySDen Documentation -> Description of XCrySDen's Fermi
surface viewer.  I find it a bit annoying that the option Display
-> Depth Cuing is activated by default, and apparently there is no
way to change the width (or color) of the Brillouin zone wire, but one
can live with this.

Two important issues:

1. The origin of a bandgrid for XCrySDen must be at Gamma, therefore
the k-mesh used for the calculation should not be shifted. This is
actually tested in ene2bxsf, as the list of irreducible k-points is
mapped onto the general bandgrid.

2. The resulting .BXSF file contains only the bands which are actually
crossing the Fermi level, whose value is read from the first line of
.EIG.  The subsequent tuning of the Fermi energy is possible in the
"Isolevel" window of the "XCrySDen-Fermi Surface" program. However, if
you need to choose other band(s) for plotting you must change the
Fermi energy in the first line of .EIG and re-run the ene2bxsf script.

Animations of molecular dynamics


-------------  TASK 5 (Animations of molecular dynamics) ------------------

There is a special format for this in XCrySDen (AXSF)
invoked from the XCrySDen Menu: File -> Open Structure -> Open XSF
or launching: xcrysden --axsf < AXSF file >

The AXSF format has different flavours depending on whether the
structure is periodic or not, variable cell or not. The script md2axsf
offers (interactively) several options to design the AXSF file:
reading from unformatted .MD file or from formatted .ANI file, and
plotting the atoms within the native Siesta simulation box (variable
or fixed), or within an arbitrary user-defined output box.  With
respect to reading, the options are: 

i) read unformatted .MD file; md2axsf will (hopefully) recognize
whether it contains variable cell or not, and accordingly the AXSF
will be written as for periodic structure, either for fixed cell (as
read in from the .XV file) or variable one (as read in from the .MD
file);

ii) read formatted .ANI file; it does not contain information about
the cell, therefore the periodicity is assumed with the fixed cell, as
read in from the .XV file.  With respect to writing, the arbitrary
"output box" is defined by its origin and three spanning vectors (not
necessarily orthogonal), similarly to how his is done for rho2xsf and
vib2xsf. The idea behind this is that one may wish to show more atoms
in the animation than there are in the unit cell, or, on the contrary,
to select just a small portion of a large unit cell. If one chooses
the output box, all information about the original unit cell is lost
in the output AXSF file, so that the resulting animation would look
like one for a finite "molecule", even if - technically - the output
box is preserved in AXSF, as if it would be for a periodic
structure. Of course a user-chosen output box does not necessarily
possess true lattice periodicity.

Each MD record bears a step number, so that cumulative MD file can be
an agglomerate of several MS runs.  Therefore md2axsf asks the user to
select the first and last step and the increment of those present in
MD to be passed to AXSF.  This is necessary because the AXSF format
demands a throughout numeration of MD steps. After reading in all MD
information, the program asks:

   Cleanly read in          NNN   MD steps
 You may wish to keep only some of these steps,
 MDfirst, MDfirst+MDstep, MDfirst+2*MDstep etc. till (not exceeding) MDlast
 from the list above. Specify three numbers MDfirst, MDlast, MDstep -
 or 0 for any of them as default : 

and if you pass e.g. 10 0 3
this would mean that you want the MD records from 10 to the last available one,
with the step 3. That is, the MD records 10, 13, 16, 19 etc. will be
extracted and written into AXSF numbered as 1, 2, 3, 4 etc.

Vizualization of phonons


-----------------  TASK 6 (Vizualization of phonons) ----------------------

The "vibrator" package dumps phonon eigenvalues and eigenvectors into
the (readable) file <Taskname>.vectors

This information is visualized by the script vib2xsf in two ways:

1) as a static .XSF file, with displacement pattern shown by arrows,
make use of a provision in XCrySDen to allow plotting forces.  The
displacements of atoms within a particular phonon mode are therefore
written in the .XSF file as if they were forces;

2) as a animation, assuming a harmonic displacement of atoms within each
given mode, and performing a desirable number of simulation steps
over the full period of vibration.

As the <Taskname>.vectors contains information about all
vibration modes, which can be numerous, with only several being of
interest, the script asks about first and last modes to vizualize, and
for each one of them, NN, two separate files will be created, named
<Taskname>.Mode_NN.XSF (with arrows), and
<Taskname>.Mode_NN.AXSF (with animation).  It would have been
straightforward to write these information over all atoms in the
cell. However, the result is not always satisfactory, especially in
the animation, as some atoms disappear at one edge of the unit cell
and enter from the opposite one. I find it more user-friendly to
define an "output box", similarly to how it is done in rho2xsf. All
atoms whose positions fall within it (taking into account lattice
translations) will be retained in the animation.  The use of a box
allows to select a small region of interest within a large supercell,
or, on the contrary, take large box, in order to show the vibrations
of translated atoms from several unit cells.

The execution of  vib2xsf  is iterative; the program asks for
1) SystemLabel of Siesta calculation (to read the file <SystemLabel>.XV );
2) the origin and three spanning vectors of the plotting box;
3) SystemLabel of vibrator calculation (to read the file <SystemLabel>.vectors;
   this SystemLabel may be the same as for Siesta, or different)
4) the first and the last mode to vizualised among those found
   in the <SystemLabel>.vectors;
5) the magnitude of maximal displacement in terms of minimal
   iteratomic distance. This will affect both arrow lengths in .XSF
   and the magnitude of vibration in .AXSF. However, the length of
   arrows (and their other attributes) can be modified in XCrySDen;
6) the number of animation steps over the 2*pi period of vibration.
   Note that the vibration FREQUENCY plays no role, and this number
   of steps will be taken for each of selected modes, whatever their
   frequencies. Therefore if you want to record down the animation,
   underlying different frequencies for different modes, you should either
   explicitly choose different number of steps in separate runs of
   vib2xsf for these modes, or tune the settings in XCrySDen when
   playing the animation.

Control within the XCrySDen:

For vibration pattern with arrows:
  File -> Open Structure -> Open XSF
  Display -> Forces (select box)
  Modify -> Forces Setting, and their e.g. "Length Factor" etc.

For animations, invoke from the XCrySDen Menu: 
  File -> Open Structure -> Open XSF
or launch: 
  xcrysden --axsf < AXSF file >

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Enjoy, and please pass bug reports/criticisms to apostnik@uos.de


Home | About | Description | Documentation | Download | News | Links
Webmaster: Tone Kokalj
This document was last modified on Tue 29 Oct 2019 12:29:46 PM CET