No Arabic abstract
Electronic structure calculations on the low dimensional spin-1/2 compound TiOCl were performed at several pressures in the orthorhombic phase, finding that the structure is quasi-one-dimensional. The Ti3+ (d1) ions have one t2g orbital occupied (dyz) with a large hopping integral along the b direction of the crystal. The most important magnetic coupling is Ti-Ti along the b axis. The transition temperature (Tc) has a linear evolution with pressure, and at about 10 GPa this Tc is close to room temperature, leading to a room temperature spin-Peierls insulator-insulator transition, with an important reduction of the charge gap in agreement with the experiment. On the high-pressure monoclinic phase, TiOCl presents two possible dimerized structures, with a long or short dimerization. Long dimerized state occurs above 15 GPa, and below this pressure the short dimerized structure is the more stable phase.
We show, by means of ab-initio calculations, that electron-electron correlations play an important role in potassium-doped picene ($K_x$-picene), recently characterized as a superconductor with $T_c = 18K$. The inclusion of exchange interactions by means of hybrid functionals reproduces the correct gap for the undoped compound and predicts an antiferromagnetic state for $x=3$, where superconductivity has been observed. The latter finding is compatible with a sizable value of the correlation strength, in agreement with simple estimates. Our results highlight the similarity between potassium-doped picene and alkali-doped fulleride superconductors.
We propose an approach for the ab initio calculation of materials with strong electronic correlations which is based on all local (fully irreducible) vertex corrections beyond the bare Coulomb interaction. It includes the so-called GW and dynamical mean field theory and important non-local correlations beyond, with a computational effort estimated to be still manageable.
BaBiO3 is a well-known example of a 3D charge density wavecompound, in which the CDW behavior is induced by charge disproportionation at the Bi site. At ambient pressure, this compound is a charge-ordered insulator, but little is known about its high-pressure behavior. In this work, we study from first-principles the high-pressure phase diagram of BaBiO3 using phonon modes analysis and evolutionary crystal structure prediction. We show that charge disproportionation is very robust in this compound and persists up to 100 GPa. This causes the system to remain insulating up to the highest pressure we studied.
Using $textit{ab-initio}$ crystal structure prediction we study the high-pressure phase diagram of $textit{A}BiO_3$ bismuthates ($A$=Ba, Sr, Ca) in a pressure range up to 100$~$GPa. All compounds show a transition from the low-pressure perovskite structure to highly distorted, low-symmetry phases at high pressures (PD transition), and remain charge disproportionated and insulating up to the highest pressure studied. The PD transition at high pressures in bismuthates can be understood as a combined effect of steric arguments and of the strong tendency of bismuth to charge-disproportionation. In fact, distorted structures permit to achieve a very efficient atomic packing, and at the same time, to have Bi-O bonds of different lengths. The shift of the PD transition to higher pressures with increasing cation size within the $textit{A}BiO_3$ series can be explained in terms of chemical pressure.
We discuss a general approach to a realistic theory of the electronic structure in materials containing correlated d- or f- electrons. The main feature of this approach is the taking into account the energy dependence of the electron self-energy with the momentum dependence being neglected (local approximation). In the case of strong interactions (U/W>>1 - rare-earth system) the Hubbard-I approach is the most suitable. Starting from an exact atomic Green function with the constrained density matrix the band structure problem is formulated as the functional problem on Nmm for f-electrons and the standard LDA-functional for delocalized electrons. In the case of moderate correlations (U/W=1 metal-insulator regime) we start from the dynamical mean field iterative perturbation scheme (IPS) of G. Kotliar et. al. and also make use of our multiband atomic Green function. Finally for the weak interactions (U/W<1 -transition metals) the self-consistent diagrammatic fluctuation- exchange (FLEX)-approach of N. Bickers and D. Scalapino is generalized to the realistic multiband case. We presents two-band, two-dimensional model calculations for all three regimes. A realistic calculation in Hubbard-I scheme with the exact solution of the on-site multielectron problem for f(d)- shells was performed for mixed-valence 4f compound TmSe, and for the classical Mott insulator NiO.