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Restructuring some paragraphs
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13 changes: 13 additions & 0 deletions paper/paper.bib
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Expand Up @@ -151,3 +151,16 @@ @article{Kokalj:1999
keywords = {crystalline graphics, electronic density, isosurfaces, modelling, molecular graphics},
pages = {176--179},
}

@article{deBruijn:1981,
title = {Algebraic theory of Penrose's non-periodic tilings of the plane. II},
journal = {Indagationes Mathematicae (Proceedings)},
volume = {84},
number = {1},
pages = {53-66},
year = {1981},
issn = {1385-7258},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.1016/1385-7258(81)90017-2},
url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/1385725881900172},
author = {N.G. {de Bruijn}}
}
79 changes: 39 additions & 40 deletions paper/paper.md
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Expand Up @@ -36,43 +36,42 @@ bibliography: paper.bib
Software implementing density functional theory (DFT) in a planewave basis allows for the
calculation of a large number of material properties - besides simply recovering the ground-state
wavefunction for the system, packages may implement tools for calculating phonon modes, electron
localization, and elasticity. However, structural chemists have developed their own theory tools for
understanding the factors that favor specific atomic arrangements: some examples of these tools are
crystal orbital Hamilton population (COHP) [@Dronskowski:1993], which resolves chemical bonding by
interaction energies and atom type, and DFT-Chemical Pressure [@Fredrickson:2012], which projects
the steric effects in crystals onto atom-centered spherical harmonic representations of pressure.
localization, and elasticity. However, structural chemists have developed their own tools to
understand the factors that favor specific atomic arrangements: some examples are crystal orbital
Hamilton population (COHP) [@Dronskowski:1993], which resolves chemical bonding by interaction
energies and atom type, and DFT-Chemical Pressure [@Fredrickson:2012], which projects the steric
effects in crystals onto atom-centered spherical harmonic representations of pressure.

Many tools utilized in structural chemistry are written in C or FORTRAN, which allow for high
performance - critical for systems with large numbers of degrees of freedom - but the low-level
nature of those languages serve as a barrier to entry for those who do not have a background in
programming. In particular, we consider new chemistry graduate students whose first introduction
to software development comes with coursework or research. The Julia programming language
[@Bezanson:2017] can achieve similar speeds to C or FORTRAN implementations while providing a lower
barrier to entry for novice programmers. With a toolkit that provides structures for a number of
commonly used data types and their associated methods, chemical theorists can focus on writing the
most critical portions of their theory tools without having to reimplement those structures for
every new tool.
programming. In particular, we consider new chemistry graduate students who are introduced to
software development through coursework or research. The Julia programming language [@Bezanson:2017]
can achieve similar speeds to C or FORTRAN implementations while providing a lower barrier to entry
for novice programmers. With a toolkit that provides structures for a number of commonly used data
types and their associated methods, chemical theorists can write extensible theory tools which can
easily interface with other Julia packages or computational chemistry software.

# Statement of need

`Electrum.jl` provides a number of data types that can be used to store and manipulate data
associated with crystal structures. This data may be read from a variety of sources: at the moment,
we support outputs from abinit [@Gonze:2020; @Romero:2020; @Gonze:2002], the Vienna *ab initio*
Simulation Package (VASP) [@Kresse:1993; @Kresse:1996A; @Kresse:1996B;], LAMMPS [@Thompson:2022],
and the XCrysDen XSF data format [@Kokalj:1999].

`Electrum.jl` was designed for graduate and undergraduate students who are familiar with solid-state
chemistry but are new to programming. The Julia REPL provides a convenient interactive interface for
working with the data, and all exported data types have pretty-print methods that provide a summary
of relevant information in a data structure without polluting the output.

The data types provided by `Electrum.jl` are designed to allow for the storage of crystal data in
arbitrary dimensions. This functionality may be useful in the study of structural phenomena modeled
in projective spaces, such as incommensurately modulated structures and quasicrystals.

To maintain performance in a variety of scenarios, we took special care to optimize the layouts of
commonly used data structures. Static vectors and matrices from the `StaticArrays.jl` package are
used wherever possible in data structure definitions to match the dimensionality of the structure.
`Electrum.jl` was designed for graduate and undergraduate students who may be introduced to
programming through computational chemistry. The package provides a number of data types that can be
used to store data associated with crystal structures, and methods that perform common operations.
As much as possible, we accomplish this by overloading Julia `Base` methods so that syntax is
intuitive for new users. Users may import data from a variety of sources: at the moment, we support
FORTRAN binary outputs from abinit [@Gonze:2020; @Romero:2020; @Gonze:2002] and Vienna *ab initio*
Simulation Package (VASP) [@Kresse:1993; @Kresse:1996A; @Kresse:1996B], atomic position data from
LAMMPS [@Thompson:2022], and the XCrysDen XSF data format [@Kokalj:1999]. Atomic position data may
be exported to the XYZ and VASP POSCAR formats, and more complex scalar data may be exported to the
XCrysDen XSF format.

Although `Electrum.jl` aims for simplicity for new users, the data types provide a great deal of
flexibility for the construction of advanced tools. When possible, data structures are defined with
a dimension parameter that may be set arbitrarily, and methods which operate on them are defined
generically so that they produce valid results regardless of dimension. This enables the development
of tools that model crystals with more complex periodicity, such as incommensurately modulated
crystals and quasicrystals, whose lattices are commonly modeled in a higher-dimensional superspace
which is cut at an irrational angle and projected down to 3 dimensions [@deBruijn:1981].

# Examples

Expand All @@ -93,7 +92,7 @@ constructs an orthogonal supercell.
using Electrum

MgZn2 = readPOSCAR("POSCAR") # containing the atomic coordinates
T = [1 1 0; -1 1 0; 0 0 1] * []
T = [1 1 0; -1 1 0; 0 0 1] * diagm([5, 5, 3])
MgZn2_sc = supercell(MgZn2, T)
writePOSCAR4("POSCAR2", MgZn2_sc)
```
Expand All @@ -111,23 +110,23 @@ Figure ?. The calculated values were obtained from an abinit calculation {insert
here}. The phases associated with each reflection are encoded in the color of each spot. This is
compared to a real diffraction pattern obtained for the same compound using Mo-Kα radiation.
Discrepancies between calculated and real diffraction patterns may be attributed to the DFT
calculation being run at zero temperature and the approximations made by choice of the
exchange-correlation functional.
calculation being run at zero temperature and the approximations made by choice of pseudopotential
and exchange-correlation functional.

One may verify that the inverse FFT of the FFT of the density grid returns the same values to within
floating-point error:

# Development roadmap

`Electrum.jl` will seek to integrate itself with `AtomsBase.jl` to allow for easier interoperability
with other Julia packages that are used to perform chemical computation, such as `DFTK.jl`. This
integration will allow other packages to use methods provided by `Electrum.jl` to read files from
formats that were previously not supported, particularly the FORTRAN binary outputs from abinit and
VASP.
`Electrum.jl` seeks to integrate itself with `AtomsBase.jl` to allow for easier interoperability
with other Julia packages used to perform chemical computation, such as `DFTK.jl`. This integration
will allow other packages to use methods provided by `Electrum.jl` to read files in formats not
supported by those packages, particularly the FORTRAN binary outputs from abinit and VASP.

Data visualization was a primary consideration for the authors, and while visualization is outside
of the scope of `Electrum.jl`, we aim to provide `Makie.jl` plot recipes in the future, allowing for
convenient visualization of data structures within Visual Studio Code or other editors.
of the scope of `Electrum.jl`, we aim to provide `Makie.jl` plot recipes in the future as part of a
supplemental package, allowing for convenient visualization of data structures in editors that can
render HTML.

Further testing and development will also be directed at the use of GPUs to massively parallelize
large computations. This will leverage the data structures provided by packages such as `CUDA.jl`,
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