No Arabic abstract
We present first principles calculations of the two-particle excitation spectrum of CrI$_3$ using many-body perturbation theory including spin-orbit coupling. Specifically, we solve the Bethe-Salpeter equation, which is equivalent to summing up all ladder diagrams with static screening and it is shown that excitons as well as magnons can be extracted seamlessly from the calculations. The resulting optical absorption spectrum as well as the magnon dispersion agree very well with recent measurements and we extract the amplitude for optical excitation of magnons resulting from spin-orbit interactions. Importantly, the results do not rely on any assumptions on the microscopic magnetic interactions such as Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM), Kitaev or biquadratic interactions and we obtain a model independent estimate of the gap between acoustic and optical magnons of 0.3 meV. In addition, we resolve the magnon wavefunction in terms of band transitions and show that the magnon carries a spin that is significantly smaller than $hbar$. This highlights the importance of terms that do not commute with $S^z$ in any Heisenberg model description.
The marked interplay between the crystalline, electronic, and magnetic structure of atomically thin magnets has been regarded as the key feature for designing next-generation magneto-optoelectronic devices. In this respect, a detailed understanding of the microscopic interactions underlying the magnetic responses of these crystals is of primary importance. Here, we combine model Hamiltonians with multi-reference configuration interaction wavefunctions to accurately determine the strength of the spin couplings in the prototypical single-layer magnet CrI$_3$. Our calculations identify the (ferromagnetic) Heisenberg exchange interaction $J = -1.44$ meV as the dominant term, being the inter-site magnetic anisotropies substantially {weaker}. We also find that single-layer CrI$_3$ features an out-of-plane easy axis ensuing from a single-ion anisotropy $A = -0.10$ meV, and predict $g$-tensor in-plane components $g_{xx} = g_{yy} = 1.90$ and out-of-plane component $g_{zz} = 1.92$. In addition, we assess the performance of a dozen widely used density functionals against our accurate correlated wavefunctions {calculations} and available experimental data, thereby establishing reference results for future first-principles investigations. Overall, our findings offer a firm theoretical ground to experimental observations.
The bandstructure of gold is calculated using many-body perturbation theory (MBPT). Different approximations within the GW approach are considered. Standard single shot G0W0 corrections shift the unoccupied bands up by ~0.2 eV and the first sp-like occupied band down by ~0.4 eV, while leaving unchanged the 5d occupied bands. Beyond G0W0, quasiparticle self-consistency on the wavefunctions lowers the occupied 5d bands by 0.35 eV. Globally, many-body effects achieve an opening of the interband gap (5d-6sp gap) of 0.35 to 0.75 eV approaching the experimental results. Finally, the quasiparticle bandstructure is compared to the one obtained by the widely used HSE (Heyd, Scuseria, and Ernzerhof) hybrid functional.
We present an extensive set of surface and chemisorption energies calculated using state of the art many-body perturbation theory. In the first part of the paper we consider ten surface reactions in the low coverage regime where experimental data is available. Here the random phase approximation (RPA) is found to yield high accuracy for both adsorption and surface energies. In contrast all the considered density functionals fail to describe both quantities accurately. This establishes the RPA as a universally accurate method for surface science. In the second part, we use the RPA to construct a database of 200 high quality adsorption energies for reactions involving OH, CH, NO, CO, N$_2$, N, O and H over a wide range of 3d, 4d and 5d transition metals. Due to the significant computational demand, these results are obtained in the high coverage regime where adsorbate-adsorbate interactions can be significant. RPA is compared to the more advanced renormalised adiabatic LDA (rALDA) method for a subset of the reactions and they are found to describe the adsorbate-metal bond as well as adsorbate-adsorbate interactions similarly. The RPA results are compared to a range of standard density functional theory methods typically employed for surface reactions representing the various rungs on Jacobs ladder. The deviations are found to be highly functional, surface and reaction dependent. Our work establishes the RPA and rALDA methods as universally accurate full ab-initio methods for surface science where accurate experimental data is scarce. The database is freely available via the Computational Materials Repository (CMR).
Doping is one of the most common strategies for improving the photocatalytic and solar energy conversion properties of TiO$_2$, hence an accurate theoretical description of the electronic and optical properties of doped TiO$_2$ is of both scientific and practical interest. In this work we use many-body perturbation theory techniques to investigate two typical n-type dopants, Niobium and Hydrogen, in TiO$_2$ rutile. Using the GW approximation to determine band edges and defect energy levels, and the Bethe Salpeter equation for the calculation of the absorption spectra, we find that the defect energy levels form non-dispersive bands %associated with localized states lying $simeq 2.2 eV$ above the top of the corresponding valence bands ($simeq 0.9 eV$ below the conduction bands of the {it pristine} material). The defect states are also responsible for the appearance of low energy absorption peaks that enhance the solar spectrum absorption of rutile. The spatial distributions of the excitonic wavefunctions associated with these low energy excitations are very different for the two dopants, suggesting a larger mobility of photoexcited electrons in Nb-TiO$_2$.
We present a many-body formalism for the simulation of time-resolved nonlinear spectroscopy and apply it to study the coherent interaction between excitons and trions in doped transition-metal dichalcogenides. Although the formalism can be straightforwardly applied in a first-principles manner, for simplicity we use a parameterized band structure and a static model dielectric function, both of which can be obtained from a calculation using the $GW$ approximation. Our simulation results shed light on the interplay between singlet and triplet trions in molybdenum- and tungsten-based compounds. Our two-dimensional electronic spectra are in excellent agreement with recent experiments and we accurately reproduce the beating of a cross-peak signal indicative of quantum coherence between excitons and trions. Although we confirm that the quantum beats in molybdenum-based monolayers unambigously reflect the exciton-trion coherence time, they are shown here to provide a lower-bound to the coherence time of tungsten analogues due to a destructive interference emerging from coexisting singlet and triplet trions.