DMFT Theory of Elemental Actinides and Their Compounds

Elemental actinides and their compounds have for many years posed a challenge to the electronic structure field, as their physical properties are not well described within density functional theory and its variants due to strong correlations. Dynamical mean field theory, on the other hand, has explained and predicted many suprising experimental features of these systems, as it captures non perturbative correlation effects. We will describe some of these, such as spectral features and magnetic moments. We will then go into more depth about why these features arise because multiple energy scales (crystal field, spin orbit coupling, Hunds rule coupling, Hubbard U and kinetic energy ) are all important and have to be taken into consideration, as well as how it affects the physics of these compounds. Examples of the successes of DMFT + electronic structure will be drawn from a large number of materials. These include nuclear fuels such as UO2, the phase diagram of elemental Pu and why its beta phase is the most correlated of all, superconductors, such as PuCoGa5 and UTe2, and ferromagnets such as UGe2.