A multi-orbital iterated perturbation theory for model Hamiltonians and real material-specific calculations of correlated systems

Perturbative schemes utilizing a spectral moment expansion are well known and extensively used for investigating the physics of model Hamiltonians and real material systems. The advantages they offer, in terms of being computationally inexpensive, with real frequency output at zero and finite temperatures, compensate for their deficiencies and offer a quick, qualitative analysis of the system behavior. In this work, we have developed a method, that can be classified as a multi-orbital iterative perturbation theory (MO-IPT) to study N-fold degenerate and non degenerate Anderson impurity models. As applications of the solver, we have combined the method with dynamical mean field theory to explore lattice models like the single orbital Hubbard model, covalent band insulator and the multi-orbital Hubbard model for density-density type interactions in different parameter regimes. The Hund's coupling effects in case of multiple orbitals is also studied. The limitations and quality of results are gauged through extensive comparison with data from the numerically exact continuous time quantum Monte Carlo method (hybridization expansion CTQMC). In general we observe that the agreement with CTQMC results gets better as we move away from particle-hole symmetry. We have integrated MO-IPT with density functional theory based electronic structure methods to study real material systems. As a test case, we have studied the classic, strongly correlated electronic material, SrVO$_3$. A comparison of density of states and photo emission spectrum (PES) with results obtained from different impurity solvers and experiments yields good agreement.Comment: 20 pages, 20 figure

Localization of phonons in mass-disordered alloys: A typical medium dynamical cluster approach

The effect of disorder on lattice vibrational modes has been a topic of interest for several decades. In this work, we employ a Green\u27s function based approach, namely, the dynamical cluster approximation (DCA), to investigate phonons in mass-disordered systems. Detailed benchmarks with previous exact calculations are used to validate the method in a wide parameter space. An extension of the method, namely, the typical medium DCA (TMDCA), is used to study Anderson localization of phonons in three dimensions. We show that, for binary isotopic disorder, lighter impurities induce localized modes beyond the bandwidth of the host system, while heavier impurities lead to a partial localization of the low-frequency acoustic modes. For a uniform (box) distribution of masses, the physical spectrum is shown to develop long tails comprising mostly localized modes. The mobility edge separating extended and localized modes, obtained through the TMDCA, agrees well with results from the transfer matrix method. A reentrance behavior of the mobility edge with increasing disorder is found that is similar to, but somewhat more pronounced than, the behavior in disordered electronic systems. Our work establishes a computational approach, which recovers the thermodynamic limit, is versatile and computationally inexpensive, to investigate lattice vibrations in disordered lattice systems

Ab initio approaches to high-entropy alloys: a comparison of CPA, SQS, and supercell methods

We present a comparative study of different modeling approaches to the electronic properties of the $\textrm{Hf}_{0.05}\textrm{Nb}_{0.05}\textrm{Ta}_{0.8}\textrm{Ti}_{0.05}\textrm{Zr}_{0.05}$ high entropy alloy. Common to our modeling is the methodology to compute the one-particle Green's function in the framework of density functional theory. We demonstrate that the special quasi-random structures modeling and the supercell, i.e. the locally self-consistent multiple-scatering methods provide very similar results for the ground state properties such as the spectral function (density of states) and the equilibrium lattice parameter. To reconcile the multiple-scattering single-site coherent potential approximation with the real space supercell methods, we included the effect of screening of the net charges of the alloy components. Based on the analysis of the total energy and spectral functions computed within the density functional theory, we found no signature for the long-range or local magnetic moments formation in the $\textrm{Hf}_{0.05}\textrm{Nb}_{0.05}\textrm{Ta}_{0.8}\textrm{Ti}_{0.05}\textrm{Zr}_{0.05}$ high entropy alloy, instead we find possible superconductivity below $\sim 9$K