A systematic comparative study has been performed to better understand DFT$+U$ (density functional theory + $U$) method. We examine the effect of choosing different double counting and exchange-correlation functionals. The calculated energy distribution and the Hund-$J$ dependence of potential profile for representative configurations clearly show the different behaviors of each DFT$+U$ formalism. In particular, adopting spin-dependent exchange-correlation functionals likely leads to undesirable magnetic solution. Our analyses are further highlighted by real material examples ranging from insulating oxides (MnO and NiO) to metallic magnetic systems (SrRuO$_3$ and BaFe$_2$As$_2$). The current work sheds new light on understanding DFT$+U$ and provides a guideline to use the related methods.
A simple scheme for avoiding non-spherical double counting in the combination of density func- tional theory with dynamical mean-field theory (DFT+DMFT)is developed. It is applied to total- energy calculations and structural optimization of the pnictide superconductor LaFeAsO. The results are compared to a recently proposed "exact" double-counting formulation. Both schemes bring the optimized Fe-As interatomic distance close to the experimental value. This resolves the long stand- ing controversy between DFT+DMFT and experiment for the structural optimization of LaFeAsO.
Spectral properties of fcc-Ce have been calculated in frames of modern DFT+DMFT method with Hybridization expansion CT-QMC solver. The influence of Hund's exchange and spin-orbit coupling (SOC) on spectral properties of Ce were investigated. SOC is responsible for the shape of spectra near the Fermi level and Hund's exchange interaction doesn't change the obtained spectra and can be neglected.
Titanium dioxide (TiO$_2$) presents a long-standing challenge for approximate Kohn-Sham density-functional theory (KS-DFT), as well as to its Hubbard-corrected extension, DFT+$U$. We find that a previously proposed extension of first-principles DFT+$U$ to incorporate a Hund's $J$ correction, termed DFT+$U$+$J$, in combination with parameters calculated using a recently proposed linear-response theory, predicts fundamental band-gaps accurate to well within the experimental uncertainty in rutile and anatase TiO$_2$. Our approach builds upon established findings that Hubbard correction to both ti…
We have formulated and implemented a fully charge-self-consistent density functional theory plus dynamical mean field theory methodology which enables an efficient calculation of the total energy of realistic correlated electron systems. The density functional portion of the calculation uses a plane wave basis set within the projector augmented wave method enabling study of systems with large, complex unit cells. The dynamical mean field portion of the calculation is formulated using maximally localized Wannier functions, enabling a convenient implementation which is independent of the basis s…
We implemented combination of DMFT and $GW$ in its fully self-consistent way, one shot $GW$ approximation, and quasiparticle self-consistent scheme, and studied how well these combined methods perform on H$_2$ molecule as compared to more established methods such as LDA+DMFT. We found that most flavors of $GW$+DMFT break down in strongly correlated regime due to causality violation. Among $GW$+DMFT methods, only the self-consistent quasiparticle $GW$+DMFT with static double-counting, and a new method with causal double-counting, correctly recover the atomic limit at large H-atom separation. Wh…
We study non-equilibrium current fluctuations through a quantum dot, which includes a ferromagnetic Hund's rule coupling $J$, in the low-energy Fermi liquid regime using the renormalized perturbation theory. The resulting cumulant for the current distribution in the particle-hole symmetric case, shows that spin-triplet and spin-singlet pairs of quasiparticles are formed in the current due to the Hund's rule coupling and these pairs enhance the current fluctuations. In the fully screened higher-spin Kondo limit, the Fano factor takes a value $F_b = (9M+6)/ (5M+4)$ determined by the orbital dege…
We present a systematical theoretical study on the transport properties of an archetypal family of Hund's metals, Sr$_2$RuO$_4$,Sr$_3$Ru$_2$O$_7$, SrRuO$_3$ and CaRuO$_3$, within the combination of first principles density functional theory and dynamical mean field theory. The agreement between theory and experiments for optical conductivity and resistivity is good, which indicates that electron-electron scattering dominates the transport of ruthenates. We demonstrate that in the single-site dynamical mean field approach the transport properties of Hund's metals fall into the scenario of "resi…
We performed comparative analysis for DFT+$U$ functionals to better understand their applicability to non-collinear magnetism. Taking LiNiPO$_4$ and Sr$_2$IrO$_4$ as examples, we investigated the results out of two formalisms based on charge-only density and spin density functional plus $U$ calculations. Our results show that the ground state spin order in terms of tilting angle is strongly dependent on Hund $J$. In particular, the opposite behavior of canting angles as a function of $J$ is found for LiNiPO$_4$. The dependence on the other physical parameters such as Hubbard $U$ and Slater par…
For reliable and efficient inclusion of electron-electron correlation effects in nanosystems we propose a combined density-functional-theory/nonhomogeneous dynamical-mean-field-theory (DFT + DMFT) approach which employs an approximate Iterative Perturbative Theory (IPT) impurity solver. The validity of the method is demonstrated by successful examination of the size-dependent magnetic properties of iron nanoparticles containing 11-100 atoms. We show that the DFT+ DMFT solution is in very good agreement with experimental data, in particular it does not lead to the overestimation of magnetizatio…
The density functional theory (DFT)+$U$ method is a pragmatic and effective approach for calculating the ground-state properties of strongly-correlated systems, and linear response calculations are widely used to determine the requisite Hubbard parameters from first principles. We provide a detailed treatment of spin within this linear response approach, demonstrating that the conventional Hubbard $U$ formula, unlike the conventional DFT+$U$ corrective functional, incorporates interactions that are off-diagonal in the spin indices and places greater weight on one spin channel over the other. W…
We investigate the effect of charge self-consistency (CSC) in density functional theory plus dynamical mean-field theory (DFT+DMFT) calculations compared to simpler "one-shot" calculations for materials where interaction effects lead to a strong redistribution of electronic charges between different orbitals or between different sites. We focus on two systems close to a metal-insulator transition, for which the importance of CSC is currently not well understood. Specifically, we analyze the strain-related orbital polarization in the correlated metal CaVO$_3$ and the spontaneous electronic char…
We investigate the 5d transition metal oxide BaOsO$_3$ within a combination of density functional theory (DFT) and dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT), using a matrix-product-state impurity solver. BaOsO$_3$ has 4 electrons in the t$_{2g}$ shell akin to ruthenates but stronger spin-orbit coupling (SOC) and is thus expected to reveal an interplay of Hund's metal behavior with SOC. We explore the paramagnetic phase diagram as a function of SOC and Hubbard interaction strengths, identifying metallic, band (van-Vleck) insulating and Mott insulating regions. At the physical values of the two couplin…
We consider electronic correlation effects and their impact on magnetic properties of tetragonally distorted chemically ordered FeCo alloys (L1$_0$ structure) being a promising candidate for rare-earth-free permanent magnets. We employ a state-of-the-art method combining density functional and dynamical mean-field theory. According to our results, the predicted Curie temperature reduces with increase of lattice parameters ratio $c/a$ and reaches nearly 850 K at ${c/a=1.22}$. For all considered $c/a$ from 1 to $\sqrt{2}$, we find well-localized magnetic moments on Fe sites, which are formed due…
Impact of strong electronic correlations on altermagnets: the case of NiS2
Center for Computational Quantum Physics (CCQ), Flatiron Institute（平顿研究所计算量子物理中心）；Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Minnesota（明尼苏达大学化学工程与材料科学系）；Collège de France（法兰西公学院）；CPHT, CNRS, École Polytechnique, IP Paris（巴黎综合理工学院CNRS CPHT实验室）；DQMP, University of Geneva（日内瓦大学DQMP）；Department of Physics, The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign（伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校格雷英工程学院物理学系）；Anthony J. Leggett Institute for Condensed Matter Theory, The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign（伊利诺伊大学厄巴纳-香槟分校格雷英工程学院安东尼·J·雷格特凝聚态理论研究所）
The debate whether uranium 5f electrons are closer to being localized or itinerant in the ferromagnetic compound UGa2 is not yet fully settled. The experimentally determined magnetic moments are large, approximately 3 Bohr magnetons, suggesting the localized character of the 5f electrons. In the same time, one can identify signs of itinerant as well as localized behavior in various spectroscopic observations. The band theory, employing local exchange-correlation functionals, is biased toward itinerant 5f states and severely underestimates the moments. Using material-specific dynamical mean-fie…
In this article, we propose an energy functional at the level of DFT+U+V that allows us to compute self-consistently the values of the on-site interaction, Hubbard U and Hund J, as well as the intersite interaction V. This functional extends the previously proposed ACBN0 functional [Phys. Rev. X 5, 011006 (2015)] including both on-site and intersite interactions. We show that this ab initio self-consistent functional yields improved electronic properties for a wide range of materials, ranging from $sp$ materials to strongly-correlated materials. This functional can also be seen as an alternati…
We perform a theoretical study of the electronic structure and magnetic properties of the prototypical magnetic MAX-phase Mn$_2$GaC with the main focus given to the origin of magnetic interactions in this system. Using the density functional theory+dynamical mean-field theory (DFT+DMFT) method we explore the effects of electron-electron interactions and magnetic correlations on the electronic properties, magnetic state, and spectral weight coherence of paramagnetic and magnetically-ordered phases of Mn$_2$GaC. We also benchmark the DFT-based disordered local moment approach for this system by …
Effective field theory (EFT) methods are applied to density functional theory (DFT) as part of a program to systematically go beyond mean-field approaches to medium and heavy nuclei. A system of fermions with short-range, natural interactions and an external confining potential (e.g., fermionic atoms in an optical trap) serves as a laboratory for studying DFT/EFT. An effective action formalism leads to a Kohn-Sham DFT by applying an inversion method order-by-order in the EFT expansion parameter. Representative results showing the convergence of Kohn-Sham calculations at zero temperature in the…
We study energetics and the nature of both homogeneous and mixed spin (MS) states in LaCoO$_3$ incorporating structural changes of the crystal volume expansion and the Co-O bond disproportionation (BD) during the spin-state transition using the density functional theory plus dynamical mean field theory (DFT+DMFT) method. DFT+DMFT predicts that energetics of both excited spin states are almost the same while DFT+U calculations of the same structures energetically favor the MS states and produce various metastable solutions whose energetics depend sensitively on final spin states. Within DFT+DMF…
A combination of density functional and dynamical mean-field theory is applied to the perovskites SrVO$_3$, LaTiO$_3$ and LaVO$_3$. We show that DFT+DMFT in conjunction with the standard fully localized-limit (FLL) double-counting predicts that LaTiO$_3$ and LaVO$_3$ are metals even though experimentally they are correlation-driven ("Mott") insulators. In addition, the FLL double counting implies a splitting between oxygen $p$ and transition metal $d$ levels which differs from experiment. Introducing into the theory an \textit{ad hoc} double counting correction which reproduces the experimenta…
We propose a refined scheme of deriving an effective low-energy Hamiltonian for materials with strong electronic Coulomb correlations beyond density functional theory (DFT). By tracing out the electronic states away from the target degrees of freedom in a controlled way by a perturbative scheme we construct an effective model for a restricted low-energy target space incorporating the effects of high-energy degrees of freedom in an effective manner. The resulting effective model can afterwards be solved by accurate many-body solvers. We improve this "multi-scale ab initio scheme for correlated …
This work continues a program to systematically generalize the Skyrme Hartree-Fock method for medium and heavy nuclei by applying effective field theory (EFT) methods to Kohn-Sham density functional theory (DFT). When conventional Kohn-Sham DFT for Coulomb systems is extended beyond the local density approximation, the kinetic energy density tau is sometimes included in energy functionals in addition to the fermion density. However, a local (semi-classical) expansion of tau is used to write the energy as a functional of the density alone, in contrast to the Skyrme approach. The difference is m…
Electron correlation effects in Fe are analyzed using a first principles LCAO-scheme. In our approach, we first use a local orbital DFT-LDA solution to introduce a Hubbard Hamiltonian without fitting parameters. In a second step, we introduce a many-body solution to this Hamiltonian using a DMF approximation. Our analysis shows that magnetism in Fe is an effect associated with the first atomic Hund's rule. Moreover, we also find important correlation effects in the Fe-spin polarized DOS. The photoemision spectra is explained using a value of U_eff as large as 4 eV, provided the satellite peaks…
We analyze the momentum- and temperature dependences of the magnetic susceptibilities and magnetic exchange interaction in paramagnetic bcc iron by a combination of density functional theory and dynamical mean-field theory (DFT+DMFT). By considering a general derivation of the orbital-resolved effective model for spin degrees of freedom for Hund's metals, we relate momentum-dependent susceptibilities in the paramagnetic phase to the magnetic exchange. We then calculate non-uniform orbital-resolved susceptibilities at high-symmetry wave vectors by constructing appropriate supercells in the DMFT…
We propose a hybrid approach which employs the dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) self-energy for the correlated, typically rather localized orbitals and a conventional density functional theory (DFT) exchange-correlation potential for the less correlated, less localized orbitals. We implement this self-energy (plus charge density) self-consistent DFT+DMFT scheme in a basis of maximally localized Wannier orbitals using Wien2K, wien2wannier, and the DMFT impurity solver w2dynamics. As a testbed material we apply the method to SrVO$_3$ and report a significant improvement as compared to previous…
Density functional theory augmented with Hubbard-$U$ corrections (DFT+$U$) is currently one of the widely used methods for first-principles electronic structure modeling of insulating transition metal oxides (TMOs). Since $U$ is relatively large compared to band widths, the magnetic excitations in TMOs are expected to be well described by a Heisenberg model. However, in practice the calculated exchange parameters $J_{ij}$ depend on the magnetic configuration from which they are extracted and on the functional used to compute them. In this work we investigate how the spin polarization dependenc…
We present a self-consistent numerical approach to solve the Gutzwiller variational problem for general multi-band models with arbitrary on-site interaction. The proposed method generalizes and improves the procedure derived by Deng et al., Phys. Rev. B. 79 075114 (2009), overcoming the restriction to density-density interaction without increasing the complexity of the computational algorithm. Our approach drastically reduces the problem of the high-dimensional Gutzwiller minimization by mapping it to a minimization only in the variational density matrix, in the spirit of the Levy and Lieb for…
The combination of density functional theory and single-site dynamical mean-field theory, using both Hartree and full continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo impurity solvers, is used to study the metal-insulator phase diagram of perovskite transition-metal oxides of the form $AB$O$_3$ with a rare-earth ion $A$=Sr, La, Y and transition metal $B$=Ti, V, Cr. The correlated subspace is constructed from atomiclike $d$ orbitals defined using maximally localized Wannier functions derived from the full $p$-$d$ manifold; for comparison, results obtained using a projector method are also given. Paramagneti…
Present routes to produce magnetic organic-based materials adopt a common strategy: the use of magnetic species (atoms, polyradicals, etc.) as building blocks. We explore an alternative approach which consists of selective hydrogenation of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons. Self-Consistent-Field (SCF) (Hartree-Fock and DFT) and multi-configurational (CISD and MCSCF) calculations on coronene and corannulene, both hexa-hydrogenated, show that the formation of stable high spin species is possible. The spin of the ground states is discussed in terms of the Hund rule and Lieb's theorem for bipartite…
