Tutorial

This tutorial will take you through all the basic steps of using Z2Pack. Since Z2Pack is a Python library, you might need some knowledge of Python along the way. If you’ve never used Python before, you might want to check out the excellent Python Tutorial first.

I have also written a book chapter for the “Topological Matter” book, which explains the physical background of Z2Pack in more detail.

If you’ve used a previous version of Z2Pack, you should probably read the what’s new section first. Otherwise you can skip ahead and start with the installation instructions.

• What’s new in Z2Pack 2.0
• Installation and Setup
  • Installing Z2Pack
  • Installing the tight-binding backend
  • Setting up first-principles codes
    • ABINIT Setup
    • VASP Setup
• Creating a Z2Pack System
  • Models with an explicit Hamilton matrix - z2pack.hm
  • Tight-binding models - z2pack.tb
  • First-principles calculations - z2pack.fp
    • 1. Preparing input files
    • 2. Preparing k-points input
    • 3. Call to the first-principles code
    • 4. Reading the .mmn file
    • First-principles codes
• Calculating a Surface
  • Basic Syntax
  • Saving and loading the result
  • Convergence options
    • Convergence of WCC positions along the k-points lines (POS CHECK)
    • Distance between the largest gap and neighbouring WCC (GAP CHECK)
    • Movement of WCC between neighbouring lines (MOVE CHECK)
    • Minimum distance between neighbouring lines
    • Initial number of lines
    • Example code
• Calculating topological invariants
• Plotting