No Arabic abstract
During the last decade, ab initio methods to calculate electronic structure of materials based on hybrid functionals are increasingly becoming widely popular. In this Letter, we show that, in the case of small gap transition metal oxides, such as VO2, with rather subtle physics in the vicinity of the Fermi-surface, such hybrid functional schemes without the inclusion of expensive fully self-consistent GW corrections fail to yield this physics and incorrectly describe the features of the wave function of states near the Fermi-surface. While a fully self-consistent GW on top of hybrid functional approach does correct these wave functions as expected, and is found to be in general agreement with the results of a fully self-consistent GW approach based on semilocal functionals, it is much more computationally demanding as compared to the latter approach for the benefit of essentially the same results.
We discuss the recently proposed LDA+DMFT approach providing consistent parameter free treatment of the so called double counting problem arising within the LDA+DMFT hybrid computational method for realistic strongly correlated materials. In this approach the local exchange-correlation portion of electron-electron interaction is excluded from self consistent LDA calculations for strongly correlated electronic shells, e.g. d-states of transition metal compounds. Then the corresponding double counting term in LDA+DMFT Hamiltonian is consistently set in the local Hartree (fully localized limit - FLL) form of the Hubbard model interaction term. We present the results of extensive LDA+DMFT calculations of densities of states, spectral densities and optical conductivity for most typical representatives of two wide classes of strongly correlated systems in paramagnetic phase: charge transfer insulators (MnO, CoO and NiO) and strongly correlated metals (SrVO3 and Sr2RuO4). It is shown that for NiO and CoO systems LDA+DMFT qualitatively improves the conventional LDA+DMFT results with FLL type of double counting, where CoO and NiO were obtained to be metals. We also include in our calculations transition metal 4s-states located near the Fermi level missed in previous LDA+DMFT studies of these monooxides. General agreement with optical and X-ray experiments is obtained. For strongly correlated metals LDA$^prime$+DMFT results agree well with earlier LDA+DMFT calculations and existing experiments. However, in general LDA+DMFT results give better quantitative agreement with experimental data for band gap sizes and oxygen states positions, as compared to the conventional LDA+DMFT.
We have performed systematic tight-binding (TB) analyses of the angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) spectra of transition-metal (TM) oxides A$M$O$_3$ ($M=$ Ti, V, Mn, and Fe) with the perovskite-type structure and compared the obtained parameters with those obtained from configuration-interaction (CI) cluster-model analyses of photoemission spectra. The values of $epsilon_d-epsilon_p$ from ARPES are found to be similar to the charge-transfer energy $Delta$ from O $2p$ orbitals to empty TM 3d orbitals and much larger than $Delta-U/2$ ($U$: on-site Coulomb energy) expected for Mott-Hubbard-type compounds including SrVO$_3$. $epsilon_d-epsilon_p$ values from {it ab initio} band-structure calculations show similar behaviors to those from ARPES. The values of the $p-d$ transfer integrals to describe the global electronic structure are found to be similar in all the estimates, whereas additional narrowing beyond the TB description occurs in the ARPES spectra of the $d$ band.
Magnetism of transition metal (TM) oxides is usually described in terms of the Heisenberg model, with orientation-independent interactions between the spins. However, the applicability of such a model is not fully justified for TM oxides because spin polarization of oxygen is usually ignored. In the conventional model based on the Anderson principle, oxygen effects are considered as a property of the TM ion and only TM interactions are relevant. Here, we perform a systematic comparison between two approaches for spin polarization on oxygen in typical TM oxides. To this end, we calculate the exchange interactions in NiO, MnO, and hematite (Fe2O3) for different magnetic configurations using the magnetic force theorem. We consider the full spin Hamiltonian including oxygen sites, and also derive an effective model where the spin polarization on oxygen renormalizes the exchange interactions between TM sites. Surprisingly, the exchange interactions in NiO depend on the magnetic state if spin polarization on oxygen is neglected, resulting in non-Heisenberg behavior. In contrast, the inclusion of spin polarization in NiO makes the Heisenberg model more applicable. Just the opposite, MnO behaves as a Heisenberg magnet when oxygen spin polarization is neglected, but shows strong non-Heisenberg effects when spin polarization on oxygen is included. In hematite, both models result in non-Heisenberg behavior. General applicability of the magnetic force theorem as well as the Heisenberg model to TM oxides is discussed.
We show that a class of compounds with $I$4/$mcm$ crystalline symmetry hosts three-dimensional semi-Dirac fermions. Unlike the known two-dimensional semi-Dirac points, the degeneracy of these three-dimensional semi-Dirac points is not lifted by spin-orbit coupling due to the protection by a nonsymmorphic symmetry -- screw rotation in the $a-b$ plane and a translation along the $c$ axis. This crystalline symmetry is found in tetragonal perovskite oxides, realizable in thin films by epitaxial strain that results in a$^0$a$^0$c$^-$-type octahedral rotation. Interestingly, with broken time-reversal symmetry, two pairs of Weyl points emerge from the semi-Dirac points within the Brillouin zone, and an additional lattice distortion leads to enhanced intrinsic anomalous Hall effect. We discuss possible fingerprints of this symmetry-protected band topology in electronic transport experiments.
The ground state electronic structures of the actinide oxides AO, A2O3 and AO2 (A=U, Np, Pu, Am, Cm, Bk, Cf) are determined from first-principles calculations, using the self-interaction corrected local spin-density (SIC-LSD) approximation. Emphasis is put on the degree of f-electron localization, which for AO2 and A2O3 is found to follow the stoichiometry, namely corresponding to A(4+) ions in the dioxide and A(3+) ions in the sesquioxides. In contrast, the A(2+) ionic configuration is not favorable in the monoxides, which therefore become metallic. The energetics of the oxidation and reduction of the actinide dioxides is discussed, and it is found that the dioxide is the most stable oxide for the actinides from Np onwards. Our study reveals a strong link between preferred oxidation number and degree of localization which is confirmed by comparing to the ground state configurations of the corresponding lanthanide oxides. The ionic nature of the actinide oxides emerges from the fact that only those compounds will form where the calculated ground state valency agrees with the nominal valency expected from a simple charge counting.