Tests of the efficiency of an augmented distorted planewave basis in electronic structure calculations.

An augmented distorted planewave plus local orbital basis set has been developed and implemented in a simple fashion in order to test its efficiency for electronic structure calculations. It is based on the idea of using distorted planewaves (Gygi 1993 Phys. Rev. B 48 11692) as basis functions in the interstitial region instead of ordinary planewaves, as in the usual linearized augmented planewave and augmented planewave plus local orbitals methods. This is shown to lead to a significantly more rapid convergence for open structures as well as a modestly improved convergence for close packed structures.