No Arabic abstract
We consider the mapping of tight-binding electronic structure theory to a local spin Hamiltonian, based on the adiabatic approximation for spin degrees of freedom in itinerant-electron systems. Local spin Hamiltonians are introduced in order to describe the energy landscape of small magnetic fluctuations, locally around a given spin configuration. They are designed for linear response near a given magnetic state and in general insufficient to capture arbitrarily strong deviations of spin configurations from the equilibrium. In order to achieve this mapping, we include a linear term in the local spin Hamiltonian that, together with the usual bilinear exchange tensor, produces an improved accuracy of effective magnetic Weiss fields for non-collinear states. We also provide examples from tight-binding electronic structure theory, where our implementation of the calculation of exchange constants is based on constraining fields that stabilize an out-of-equilibrium spin configuration. We check our formalism by means of numerical calculations for iron dimers and chains.
We present a scheme to controllably improve the accuracy of tight-binding Hamiltonian matrices derived by projecting the solutions of plane-wave ab initio calculations on atomic orbital basis sets. By systematically increasing the completeness of the basis set of atomic orbitals, we are able to optimize the quality of the band structure interpolation over wide energy ranges including unoccupied states. This methodology is applied to the case of interlayer and image states, which appear several eV above the Fermi level in materials with large interstitial regions or surfaces such as graphite and graphene. Due to their spatial localization in the empty regions inside or outside of the system, these states have been inaccessible to traditional tight-binding models and even to ab initio calculations with atom-centered basis functions.
An earlier analysis of manganese oxides in various charge states indicated that free-atom term values and universal coupling gave a reasonable account of the cohesion. This approach is here extended to LaxSr(1-x)MnO3 in a perovskite structure, and a wide range of properties, with comparable success, including the cohesion, as a function of x. Magnetic and electronic properties are treated in terms of the same parameters and the cluster orbitals used for cohesion. This includes an estimate of the Neel and Curie-Weiss temperatures for SrMnO3, an antiferromagnetic insulator, and the magnitude of a Jahn-Teller distortion in LaMnO3 which makes it also insulating with (100) ferromagnetic planes (due to a novel double-exchange for the distorted state), antiferromagnetically stacked, as observed. We estimate the Neel temperature and its volume dependence, and the ferromagnetic Curie-Weiss temperature which applies between the Neel and Jahn-Teller temperatures. We expect hopping conductivity when there is doping (0<x<1) and estimate it in the context of small-polaron theory. It is in accord with experiment between the Neel and Jahn-Teller temperatures, but below the Neel temperature the conduction appears to be band-like, for which we estimate a hole mass as enhanced in large-polaron theory. We see that above the Jahn-Teller temperature LaMnO3 should be metallic as observed, and paramagnetic with a ferromagnetic Curie-Weiss constant which we estimate. Many of these predictions are not so accurate, but are sufficiently close to provide a clear understanding of all of these properties in terms of a simple theory and parameters known at the outset. We provide also these parameters for Fe, Co, and Ca so that formulae for the properties can readily be evaluated for similar systems.
A dynamics of the precession of coupled atomic moments in the tight-binding (TB) approximation is presented. By implementing an angular penalty functional in the energy that captures the magnetic effective fields self-consistently, the motion of the orientation of the local magnetic moments is observed faster than the variation of their magnitudes. This allows the computation of the effective atomic magnetic fields that are found consistent with the Heisenbergs exchange interaction, by comparison with classical atomistic spin dynamics on Fe, Co and Ni magnetic clusters.
We present the results of an LDA and LDA+U band structure study of the monoclinic and the corundum phases of V2O3 and argue that the most prominent (spin 1/2) models used to describe the semiconductor metal transition are not valid. Contrary to the generally accepted assumptions we find that the large on site Coulomb and exchange interactions result in a total local spin of 1 rather than 1/2 and especially an orbital occupation which removes the orbital degeneracies and the freedom for orbital ordering. The calculated exchange interaction parameters lead to a magnetic structure consistent with experiment again without the need of orbital ordering. While the low-temperature monoclinic distortion of the corundum crystal structure produces a very small effect on electronic structure of v2o3, the change of magnetic order leads to drastic differences in band widths and band gaps. The low temperature monoclinic phase clearly favors the experimentally observed magnetic structure, but calculations for corundum crystal structure gave two consistent sets of exchange interaction parameters with nearly degenerate total energies suggesting a kind of frustration in the paramagnetic phase. These results strongly suggest that the phase transitions in V2O3 which is so often quoted as the example of a S=1/2 Mott Hubbard system have a different origin. So back to the drawing board!
Wannier tight-binding models are effective models constructed from first-principles calculations. As such, they bridge a gap between the accuracy of first-principles calculations and the computational simplicity of effective models. In this work, we extend the existing methodology of creating Wannier tight-binding models from first-principles calculations by introducing the symmetrization post-processing step, which enables the production of Wannier-like models that respect the symmetries of the considered crystal. Furthermore, we implement automatic workflows, which allow for producing a large number of tight-binding models for large classes of chemically and structurally similar compounds, or materials subject to external influence such as strain. As a particular illustration, these workflows are applied to strained III-V semiconductor materials. These results can be used for further study of topological phase transitions in III-V quantum wells.