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Materials specific electronic correlation effects and spectral weight ‘hot spots’ in intermetallic actinides

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2012

Tanmoy Das
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545 USA.
Jian-Xin Zhu
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545 USA.
Tomasz Durakiewicz
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545 USA.
John J. Joyce
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545 USA.
Matthias J. Graf
Affiliation:
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545 USA.
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Abstract

Many metallic actinide systems host partially filled 5f electrons in the low-energy spectrum. Consequently, they exhibit diverse quantum mechanical phenomena such as magnetism, superconductivity, a mysterious hidden-order phase, or heavy-fermion behavior. Here we present results of a unified theoretical method based on the self-consistent GW formalism for the electronic many-body self-energy. We calculate the dynamic electronic correlation spectra starting from materials specific first-principles electronic band-structure. In particular, we present results for four isostructural intermetallic actinides PuCoIn5, PuCoGa5, PuRhGa5, and UCoGa5. A common underlying property of these materials is a strong spin–orbit coupling split band structure that enables substantial spin fluctuations. In a feedback effect on the electronic structure they create electronic ‘hot spots’, where the single-particle spectral weight is maximum, resulting in a universal peak-dip-hump feature. These results are in good agreement with experiments, suggesting that actinides are adequately described by the intermediate Coulomb interaction regime, where both itinerant (peak) and localized (hump) features coexist.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2012

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