No Arabic abstract
We propose a systematic procedure for constructing effective models of strongly correlated materials. The parameters, in particular the on-site screened Coulomb interaction U, are calculated from first principles, using the GW approximation. We derive an expression for the frequency-dependent U and show that its high frequency part has significant influence on the spectral functions. We propose a scheme for taking into account the energy dependence of U, so that a model with an energy-independent local interaction can still be used for low-energy properties.
A cardinal obstacle to understanding and predicting quantitatively the properties of solids and large molecules is that, for these systems, it is very challenging to describe beyond the mean-field level the quantum-mechanical interactions between electrons belonging to different atoms. Here we show that there exists an exact dual equivalence relationship between the seemingly-distinct physical problems of describing local and non-local interactions in many-electron systems. This is accomplished using a theoretical construction analogue to the quantum link approach in lattice gauge theories, featuring the non-local electron-electron interactions as if they were mediated by auxiliary high-energy fermionic particles interacting in a purely-local fashion. Besides providing an alternative theoretical direction of interpretation, this result may allow us to study both local and non-local interactions on the same footing, utilizing the powerful state-of-the-art theoretical and computational frameworks already available.
We used fully correlated ab initio calculations to determine the effective parameters of Hubbard and t - J models for the thermoelectric misfit compound $rm Ca_3Co_4O_9$. As for the $rm Na_xCoO_2$ family the Fermi level orbitals are the $a_{1g}$ orbitals of the cobalt atoms ; the $e_g$ being always lower in energy by more than 240,meV. The electron correlation is found very large $U/tsim 26$ as well as the parameters fluctuations as a function of the structural modulation. The main consequences are a partial $a_{1g}$ electrons localization and a fluctuation of the in-plane magnetic exchange from AFM to FM. The behavior of the Seebeck coefficient as a function of temperature is discussed in view of the ab initio results, as well as the 496,K phase transition.
Good approximate eigenstates of a Hamiltionian operator which poesses a point as well as a continuous spectrum have beeen obtained using the Lanczos algorithm. Iterating with the bare Hamiltonian operator yields spurious solutions which can easily be identified. The rms radius of the ground state eigenvector, for example, is calculated using the bare operator.
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.
The LDA+DMFT method is a very powerful tool for gaining insight into the physics of strongly correlated materials. It combines traditional ab-initio density-functional techniques with the dynamical mean-field theory. The core aspects of the method are (i) building material-specific Hubbard-like many-body models and (ii) solving them in the dynamical mean-field approximation. Step (i) requires the construction of a localized one-electron basis, typically a set of Wannier functions. It also involves a number of approximations, such as the choice of the degrees of freedom for which many-body effects are explicitly taken into account, the scheme to account for screening effects, or the form of the double-counting correction. Step (ii) requires the dynamical mean-field solution of multi-orbital generalized Hubbard models. Here central is the quantum-impurity solver, which is also the computationally most demanding part of the full LDA+DMFT approach. In this chapter I will introduce the core aspects of the LDA+DMFT method and present a prototypical application.