The Vienna Ab initio Simulation Package, better known as VASP, is a package for performing
ab initio
''Ab initio'' ( ) is a Latin term meaning "from the beginning" and is derived from the Latin ''ab'' ("from") + ''initio'', ablative singular of ''initium'' ("beginning").
Etymology
Circa 1600, from Latin, literally "from the beginning", from a ...
quantum mechanical
Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, qu ...
calculations using either Vanderbilt
pseudopotential
In physics, a pseudopotential or effective potential is used as an approximation for the simplified description of complex systems. Applications include atomic physics and neutron scattering. The pseudopotential approximation was first introduced ...
s, or the
projector augmented wave method
The projector augmented wave method (PAW) is a technique used in ab initio electronic structure calculations. It is a generalization of the pseudopotential and linear augmented-plane-wave methods, and allows for density functional theory calculat ...
, and a
plane wave
In physics, a plane wave is a special case of wave or field: a physical quantity whose value, at any moment, is constant through any plane that is perpendicular to a fixed direction in space.
For any position \vec x in space and any time t, t ...
basis set. The basic methodology is
density functional theory
Density-functional theory (DFT) is a computational quantum mechanical modelling method used in physics, chemistry and materials science to investigate the electronic structure (or nuclear structure) (principally the ground state) of many-bo ...
(DFT), but the code also allows use of post-DFT corrections such as
hybrid functionals mixing DFT and
Hartree–Fock exchange (e.g. HSE, PBE0 or B3LYP), many-body perturbation theory (the
GW method) and dynamical electronic correlations within the
random phase approximation (RPA) and
MP2.
Originally, VASP was based on code written by Mike Payne (then at
MIT), which was also the basis of
CASTEP
CASTEP is a shared-source academic and commercial software package which uses density functional theory with a plane wave basis set to calculate the electronic properties of crystalline solids, surfaces, molecules, liquids and amorphous materials ...
.
It was then brought to the
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich h ...
, Austria, in July 1989 by
Jürgen Hafner. The main program was written by
Jürgen Furthmüller, who joined the group at the
Institut für Materialphysik in January 1993, and Georg Kresse. VASP is currently being developed by
Georg Kresse; recent additions include the extension of methods frequently used in molecular
quantum chemistry
Quantum chemistry, also called molecular quantum mechanics, is a branch of physical chemistry focused on the application of quantum mechanics to chemical systems, particularly towards the quantum-mechanical calculation of electronic contribution ...
to periodic systems.
VASP is currently used by more than 1400 research groups in academia and industry worldwide on the basis of software licence agreements with the University of Vienna.
The latest version VASP.6.3.2 was released on 28 June 2022.
See also
*
Quantum chemistry computer programs
Quantum chemistry computer programs are used in computational chemistry to implement the methods of quantum chemistry. Most include the Hartree–Fock (HF) and some post-Hartree–Fock methods. They may also include density functional theory (DF ...
References
External links
*http://www.vasp.at/
Computational chemistry software
Computational physics
Density functional theory software
Physics software
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