Mn Dimer can be Described Accurately with Density Functional Calculations when Self-interaction Correction is Applied

TL;DR

Applying self-interaction correction to density functional theory significantly improves the accuracy of Mn dimer calculations, resolving previous qualitative errors and enabling reliable studies of larger Mn-containing systems.

Contribution

This paper demonstrates that self-interaction correction in density functional theory yields accurate Mn dimer results, challenging the notion that failures are due to strong correlation.

Findings

Self-interaction correction aligns DFT results with experimental data.

Standard GGA functionals incorrectly predict ferromagnetic coupling.

Corrected functionals avoid over-stabilization of bonding d-states.

Abstract

Qualitatively incorrect results are obtained for the Mn dimer in density functional theory calculations using the generalized gradient approximation (GGA) and similar results are obtained from local density and meta-GGA functionals. The coupling is predicted to be ferromagnetic rather than antiferromagnetic and the bond between the atoms is predicted to be an order of magnitude too strong and about an {\AA}ngstr{\o}m too short. Explicit, self-interaction correction (SIC) applied to a commonly used GGA energy functional, however, provides close agreement with both experimental data and high-level, multi-reference wave function calculations. These results show that the failure is not due to strong correlation but rather the single electron self-interaction that is necessarily introduced in estimates of the classical Coulomb and exchange-correlation energy when only the total electron density is used as input. The corrected functional depends explicitly on the orbital densities and can, therefore, avoid the introduction of self-Coulomb interaction. The error arises because of over-stabilization of bonding $d$-states in the minority spin channel resulting from an overestimate of the $d$-electron self-interaction in the semi-local exchange-correlation functionals. Since the computational effort in the self-interaction corrected calculations scales with system size in the same way as for regular semi-local functional calculations, this approach provides a way to calculate properties of Mn nanoclusters as well as biomolecules and extended solids where Mn dimers and larger cluster are present, while multi-reference wave function calculations can only be applied to small systems.