A local-orbital density functional formalism for a many-body atomic Hamiltonian: Hubbard-Hund's coupling and DFT + U functional

In the conventional DFT + U approach, the mean field solution of the Hubbard Hamiltonian associated with the d or f (iσ) electrons of a transition metal atom is used to define the DFT + U potential acting on the iσ-electrons. In this work, we go beyond that mean field solution by analyzing the corre...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Soler-Polo, Diego, Ortega Mateo, José, Flores Sintas, Fernando
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2021
País:España
Institución:Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Repositorio:Biblos-e Archivo. Repositorio Institucional de la UAM
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:repositorio.uam.es:10486/710975
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10486/710975
https://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1361-648X/ac1155
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:DFT + U
Kanamori Hamiltonian
Correlated Electrons
Density Functional
Física
Descripción
Sumario:In the conventional DFT + U approach, the mean field solution of the Hubbard Hamiltonian associated with the d or f (iσ) electrons of a transition metal atom is used to define the DFT + U potential acting on the iσ-electrons. In this work, we go beyond that mean field solution by analyzing the correlation energy and potential for a multi-level atom described by a Kanamori Hamiltonian connected to different channels representing the environment. As a first step, we analyze the many-body solution of our model, using a local-orbital density functional formalism that takes as independent variables the orbital occupancies, n iσ , of the atomic orbitals; accordingly, we present the corresponding density functional solution describing the correlation energy and potential as a function of n iσ . Then, we use this analysis to introduce a DFT + U potential extending previous proposals to materials with arbitrarily high correlation. In particular, we find that this potential mainly screens the conventional mean field potential contribution, and also yields new terms associated with the number of atomic electrons. Our results show that the atomic correlation effects enhance the role played by the intra-atomic exchange interaction and favor the formation of magnetic solutions