Pseudopotential and full-electron DFT calculations of thermodynamic properties of electrons in metals and semiempirical equations of state

Abstract

In the present work, we compare the thermal contribution of electrons to thermodynamic functions of metals in different models at high densities and electron temperatures. One of the theoretical approaches, the full-potential linear-muffin-tin-orbital method, treats all electrons in the framework of density functional theory (DFT). The other approach, VASP, uses projector-augmented-wave pseudopotentials for the core electrons and considers the valent electrons also in the context of DFT. We analyze the limitations of the pseudopotential approach and compare the DFT results with a finite-temperature Thomas-Fermi model and two semiempirical equations of state.