The Electronic Correlation Strength of Pu

TL;DR

This paper introduces a universal scaling law for electronic correlation strength in plutonium, linking f-electron bandwidth reduction to local density approximation bandwidth across different phases.

Contribution

It reveals a universal relationship between correlation effects and bandwidth in plutonium, independent of crystal structure and lattice parameters.

Findings

Correlation strength depends only on LDA bandwidth

Universal scaling law applies across Pu phases

Bandwidth reduction correlates with electronic properties

Abstract

An electronic quantity, the correlation strength, is defined as a necessary step for understanding the properties and trends in strongly correlated electronic materials. As a test case, this is applied to the different phases of elemental Pu. Within the GW approximation we have surprisingly found a "universal" scaling relationship, where the f-electron bandwidth reduction due to correlation effects is shown to depend only on the local density approximation bandwidth and is otherwise independent of crystal structure and lattice constant.