Quasiparticle and Optical Properties of Solids and Nanostructures: The GW-BSE Approach

Abstract

We present a review of recent progress in the first-principles study of the spectroscopic properties of solids and nanostructures employing a many-body Green’s function approach based on the GW approximation to the electron self-energy. The approach has been widely used to investigate the excitedstate properties of condensed matter as probed by photoemission, tunneling, optical, and related techniques. In this article, we first give a brief overview of the theoretical foundations of the approach, then present a sample of applications to systems ranging from extended solids to surfaces to nanostructures and discuss some possible ideas for further developments.