ABINIT School 2026

A newcomer oriented school

Want to learn how to run ab initio simulations using ABINIT? Join us for the ABINIT School 2026!

The ABINIT software is a well-established open-source package for first-principles simulations of condensed matter. While tutorials are available to everyone to learn the basic usage of ABINIT, practical guidelines from experienced users is invaluable to facilitate an advanced and effective use of the software.

In order to perform calculations using any electronic structure code it is paramount to

• deeply understand the connection between the various input parameters and the physics
• and optimally adapt the calculation to the computing architecture, in particular when running on large supercomputers.

The goal of this school is thus to make the link between the theoretical framework and the practical "how to" in order to efficiently perform electronic structure calculations on large and complex systems.

To do so, the school will be composed of theoretical lessons given by experts in the field and "hands-on" sessions  to practice using ABINIT on a modern supercomputer.

This school is especially  intended for new users: whether you are starting a PhD or a Postdoc that will require electronic structure calculations or a researcher planning to start using ABINIT, you are welcome to register for the school ! Note that a basic knowledge of solid-state physics is however expected.

Various topics will be covered:

•  Introduction to density-functional theory (DFT) and how to perform a DFT calculation
• Compiling and installing ABINIT on laptops and supercomputers
• How to speed-up and optimize a DFT calculation on hundreds to thousands of CPUs and on GPUs for high-performance computing
•  Best practices to perform molecular dynamics and geometry optimizations simulations
•  How to describe magnetic systems

More advanced features will also be presented (optional labs)

• Linear response properties (DFPT)
• Electronic correlations (DFT+U, DMFT)
• Excited-states (GW)