# 21. pbc — Periodic boundary conditions¶

The pbc module provides electronic structure implementations with periodic boundary conditions based on periodic Gaussian basis functions. The PBC implementation supports both all-electron and pseudopotential descriptions.

In PySCF, the PBC implementation has a tight relation to the molecular implementation. The module names, function names, and layouts of the PBC code are the same as (or as close as possible to) those of the molecular code. The PBC code supports the use (and mixing) of basis sets, pseudopotentials, and effective core potentials developed accross the materials science and quantum chemistry communites, offering great flexibility. Moreover, many post-mean-field methods defined in the molecular code can be seamlessly mixed with PBC calculations performed at the gamma point. For example, one can perform a gamma-point Hartree-Fock calculation in a supercell, followed by a CCSD(T) calculation, which is implemented in the molecular code.

In the PBC k-point calculations, we make small changes to the gamma-point data structures and export KHF and KDFT methods. On top of these KSCF methods, we have implemented k-point CCSD and k-point EOM-CCSD methods. Other post-mean-field methods can be analogously written to explicitly enforce translational symmetry through k-point sampling.

The list of modules described in this chapter is: