Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2011
We describe a new method that allows an efficient construction of high-quality initial wavefunctions which are required as input for iterative total-energy methods. The key element of the method is the reduction of the parameter space (number of wavefunctions) by about two orders of magnitude by projecting the plane-wave basis onto an atomic basis. We show that the wave functions constructed within this basis set are very close to the exact plane-wave wavefunctions, resulting in a rapid total-energy convergence.