Precise tight-binding description of the band structure ofMgB2

We present a careful recasting of first-principles band-structure calculations for ${\mathrm{MgB}}_{2}$ in a nonorthogonal $\mathrm{sp}$-tight-binding (TB) basis. Our TB results almost exactly reproduce our full-potential linearized augmented plane-wave results for the energy bands, the densities of states, and the total energies. Our procedure generates transferable Slater-Koster parameters that should be useful for other studies of this important material.