No Arabic abstract
Including on-site electronic interactions described by the multi-orbital Hubbard model we study the correlation effects in the electronic structure of bulk palladium. We use a combined density functional and dynamical mean field theory, LDA+DMFT, based on the fluctuation exchange approximation. The agreement between the experimentally determined and the theoretical lattice constant and bulk modulus is improved when correlation effects are included. It is found that correlations modify the Fermi surface around the neck at the $L$-point while the Fermi surface tube structures show little correlation effects. At the same time we discuss the possibility of satellite formation in the high energy binding region. Spectral functions obtained within the LDA+DMFT and $GW$ methods are compared to discuss non-local correlation effects. For relatively weak interaction strength of the local Coulomb and exchange parameters spectra from LDA+DMFT shows no major difference in comparison to $GW$.
We compute the phonon dispersion, density of states, and the Gruneisen parameters of bulk palladium in the combined density functional theory (DFT) and dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT). We find good agreement with experimental results for ground state properties (equilibrium lattice parameter and bulk modulus) and the experimentally measured phonon spectra. We demonstrate that at temperatures $T lesssim 20~K$ the phonon frequency in the vicinity of the Kohn anomaly, $omega_{T1}({bf q}_{K})$, strongly decreases. This is in contrast to DFT where this frequency remains essentially constant in the whole temperature range. Apparently correlation effects reduce the restoring force of the ionic displacements at low temperatures, leading to a mode softening.
We present results for the electronic structure of alpha uranium using a recently developed quasiparticle self-consistent GW method (QSGW). This is the first time that the f-orbital electron-electron interactions in an actinide has been treated by a first-principles method beyond the level of the generalized gradient approximation (GGA) to the local density approximation (LDA). We show that the QSGW approximation predicts an f-level shift upwards of about 0.5 eV with respect to the other metallic s-d states and that there is a significant f-band narrowing when compared to LDA band-structure results. Nonetheless, because of the overall low f-electron occupation number in uranium, ground-state properties and the occupied band structure around the Fermi energy is not significantly affected. The correlations predominate in the unoccupied part of the f states. This provides the first formal justification for the success of LDA and GGA calculations in describing the ground-state properties of this material.
The demonstration of superconductivity in nickelate analogues of high $T_c$ cuprates provides new perspectives on the physics of correlated electron materials. The degree to which the nickelate electronic structure is similar to that of cuprates is an important open question. This paper presents results of a comparative study of the many-body electronic structure and theoretical phase diagram of the isostructural materials CaCuO$_2$ and NdNiO$_2$. Important differences include the proximity of the oxygen $2p$ bands to the Fermi level, the bandwidth of the transition metal-derived $3d$ bands, and the presence, in NdNiO$_2$, of both Nd-derived $5d$ states crossing the Fermi level and a van Hove singularity that crosses the Fermi level as the out of plane momentum is varied. The low energy physics of NdNiO$_2$ is found to be that of a single Ni-derived correlated band, with additional accompanying weakly correlated bands of Nd-derived states that dope the Ni-derived band. The effective correlation strength of the Ni-derived $d$-band crossing the Fermi level in NdNiO$_2$ is found to be greater than that of the Cu-derived $d$-band in CaCuO$_2$, but the predicted magnetic transition temperature of NdNiO$_2$ is substantially lower than that of CaCuO$_2$ because of the smaller bandwidth.
We propose a mechanism for binding of diatomic ligands to heme based on a dynamical orbital selection process. This scenario may be described as bonding determined by local valence fluctuations. We support this model using linear-scaling first-principles calculations, in combination with dynamical mean-field theory, applied to heme, the kernel of the hemoglobin metalloprotein central to human respiration. We find that variations in Hunds exchange coupling induce a reduction of the iron 3d density, with a concomitant increase of valence fluctuations. We discuss the comparison between our computed optical absorption spectra and experimental data, our picture accounting for the observation of optical transitions in the infrared regime, and how the Hunds coupling reduces, by a factor of five, the strong imbalance in the binding energies of heme with CO and O_2 ligands.
In this work, we investigate models for bulk, bi- and multilayers containing half-metallic ferromagnets (HMFs), at zero and at finite temperature, in order to elucidate the effects of strong electronic correlations on the spectral properties (density of states). Our focus is on the evolution of the finite-temperature many-body induced tails in the half-metallic gap. To this end, the dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) is employed. For the bulk, a Bethe lattice model is solved using a matrix product states based impurity solver at zero temperature and a continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo (CT-QMC) solver at finite temperature. We demonstrate numerically, in agreement with the analytical result, that the tails vanish at the Fermi level at zero temperature. In order to study multilayers, taken to be square lattices within the layers, we use the real-space DMFT extension with the CT-QMC impurity solver. For bilayers formed by the HMF with a band or correlated insulator, we find that charge fluctuations between the layers enhance the finite temperature tails. In addition, in the presence of inter-layer hopping, a coherent quasiparticle peak forms in the otherwise correlated insulator. In the multilayer heterostructure setup, we find that by suitably choosing the model parameters, the tails at the HMF/Mott insulator interface can be reduced significantly, and that a high spin polarization is conceivable, even in the presence of long-ranged electrostatic interactions.