330 research outputs found

    First-Principles Calculation of Electric Field Gradients and Hyperfine Couplings in YBa2Cu3O7

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    The local electronic structure of YBa2Cu3O7 has been calculated using first-principles cluster methods. Several clusters embedded in an appropriate background potential have been investigated. The electric field gradients at the copper and oxygen sites are determined and compared to previous theoretical calculations and experiments. Spin polarized calculations with different spin multiplicities have enabled a detailed study of the spin density distribution to be made and a simultaneous determination of magnetic hyperfine coupling parameters. The contributions from on-site and transferred hyperfine fields have been disentangled with the conclusion that the transferred spin densities essentially are due to nearest neighbour copper ions only with marginal influence of ions further away. This implies that the variant temperature dependencies of the planar copper and oxygen NMR spin-lattice relaxation rates are only compatible with commensurate antiferromagnetic correlations. The theoretical hyperfine parameters are compared with those derived from experimental data.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, accepted to appear in EPJ

    First principles study of local electronic and magnetic properties in pure and electron-doped Nd2_2CuO4_4

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    The local electronic structure of Nd2CuO4 is determined from ab-initio cluster calculations in the framework of density functional theory. Spin-polarized calculations with different multiplicities enable a detailed study of the charge and spin density distributions, using clusters that comprise up to 13 copper atoms in the CuO2plane. Electron doping is simulated by two different approaches and the resulting changes in the local charge distribution are studied in detail and compared to the corresponding changes in hole doped La2CuO4. The electric field gradient (EFG) at the copper nucleus is investigated in detail and good agreement is found with experimental values. In particular the drastic reduction of the main component of the EFG in the electron-doped material with respect to LaCuO4 is explained by a reduction of the occupancy of the 3d3z^2-r^2 atomic orbital. Furthermore, the chemical shieldings at the copper nucleus are determined and are compared to results obtained from NMR measurements. The magnetic hyperfine coupling constants are determined from the spin density distribution

    Density functional electronic spectrum of the CuO610Cu O_{-6}^{-10} cluster and possible local Jahn-Teller distorsions in the La-Ba-Cu-O superconductor

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    We present a density functional theory (DFT) calculation in the generalized gradient approximation to study the possibility for the existence of Jahn-Teller (JT) or pseudo Jahn-Teller (PJT) type local distortions in the La-Ba-Cu-O superconducting system. We performed the calculation and correspondingly group theory classification of the electronic ground state of the CuO610{_{6}}^{-10} elongated octahedra cluster, immersed in a background simulating the superconductor. Part of the motivation to do this study is that the origin of the apical deformation of the CuO610{_{6}}^{-10} cluster is not due to a pure JT effect, having therefore a non {\it a priori} condition to remove the degeneracy of the electronic ground state of the parent regular octahedron. We present a comparative analysis of the symmetry classified electron spectrum with previously reported results using unrestricted Hartree-Fock calculations (UHF). Both the DFT and UHF calculations produced a non degenerate electronic ground state, not having therefore the necessary condition for a pure JT effect. However, the appearance of a degenerate Eg_{g} state near to the highest occupied molecular orbital in the DFT calculation, suggests the possibility for a PJT effect responsible for a local distortion of the oxidized CuO69_{6}^{-9} cluster.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures, submitted to International Journal of Modern Physics B (IJMPB
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