Ab initio non-relativistic spin dynamics

Many magnetic materials do not conform to the (anti-)ferromagnetic paradigm where all electronic spins are aligned to a global magnetization axis. Unfortunately, most electronic structure methods cannot describe such materials with noncollinear electron spin on account of formally requiring spin alignment. To overcome this limitation, it is necessary to generalize electronic structure methods and allow each electron spin to rotate freely. Here, we report the development of an ab initio time-dependent non-relativistic two-component spinor (TDN2C), which is a generalization of the time-dependent Hartree-Fock equations. Propagating the TDN2C equations in the time domain allows for the first-principles description of spin dynamics. A numerical tool based on the Hirshfeld partitioning scheme is developed to analyze the time-dependent spin magnetization. In this work, we also introduce the coupling between electron spin and a homogenous magnetic field into the TDN2C framework to simulate the response of the electronic spin degrees of freedom to an external magnetic field. This is illustrated for several model systems, including the spin-frustrated Li₃ molecule. Exact agreement is found between numerical and analytic results for Larmor precession of hydrogen and lithium atoms. The TDN2C method paves the way for the ab initio description of molecular spin transport and spintronics in the time domain