We extend a tight-binding method to include the effects of spin-orbit coupling, and apply it to the study of the electronic properties of the actinide elements Th, U, and Pu. These tight-binding parameters are determined for the fcc crystal structure
using the equivalent equilibrium volumes. In terms of the single particle energies and the electronic density of states, the overall quality of the tight-binding representation is excellent and of the same quality as without spin-orbit coupling. The values of the optimized tight-binding spin-orbit coupling parameters are comparable to those determined from purely atomic calculations.
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.
