Fermi surface of the noble metals

The calculations of extremal areas of four Fermi surface (FS) orbits of the noble metals using the linear muffin tin orbital method in the atomic sphere approximation are reported. The calculations indicate that the l=3 potential parameters and increase in the number of k-points in the Brillouin zone (BZ) summation from 240 to 916 have no significant effect on the FS. All calculations were performed self-consistently including up to l=2 potential parameters and with 240 k points in the BZ summation. Calculations were performed with the exchange, correlation potentials (XCP) or Barth-Hedin, Barth-Hedin modified by Janak, Slater Xsub(α), and the Vosko-Wilk-Nussar. Results compared with other theoretical calculations indicate that none of the above XC potentials give an accurate representation of the FS for all the noble metals. It appears that the inclusion of the non-locality of XCP may give a better account of the FS geometry. (author). 33 refs., 4 tabs