Materials specific electronic correlation effects and spectral weight 'hot spots' in intermetallic actinides

Many metallic actinide systems host partially filled 5f electrons in the low-energy spectrum. Consequently, they exhibit diverse quantum mechanical phenomena such as magnetism, superconductivity, a mysterious hidden-order phase, or heavy-fermion behavior. Here we present results of a unified theoretical method based on the self-consistent GW formalism for the electronic many-body self-energy. We calculate the dynamic electronic correlation spectra starting from materials specific first-principles electronic band-structure. In particular, we present results for four isostructural intermetallic actinides PuCoIn₅, PuCoGa₅, PuRhGa₅, and UCoGa ₅. A common underlying property of these materials is a strong spin-orbit coupling split band structure that enables substantial spin fluctuations. In a feedback effect on the electronic structure they create electronic 'hot spots', where the single-particle spectral weight is maximum, resulting in a universal peak-dip-hump feature. These results are in good agreement with experiments, suggesting that actinides are adequately described by the intermediate Coulomb interaction regime, where both itinerant (peak) and localized (hump) features coexist.