English

Collapse of quasiparticle multiplets and $5f$ itinerant-localized crossovers in cubic phase Pu$_{3}$Ga

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2024-05-15 v1

Abstract

The physical properties of plutonium and plutonium-based intermetallic compounds are extremely sensitive to temperature, pressure, and chemical alloying. A celebrated example is the high-temperature δ\delta phase plutonium, which can be stabilized at room temperature by doping it with a few percent trivalent metal impurities, such as gallium or aluminum. The cubic phase Pu3_{3}Ga, one of the plutonium-gallium intermetallic compounds, plays a key role in understanding the phase stability and phase transformation of the plutonium-gallium system. Its electronic structure might be essential to figure out the underlying mechanism that stabilizes the δ\delta phase plutonium-gallium alloy. In the present work, we studied the temperature-dependent correlated electronic states of cubic phase Pu3_{3}Ga by means of a combination of the density functional theory and the embedded dynamical mean-field theory. We identified orbital selective 5ff itinerant-localized (coherent-incoherent) crossovers which could occur upon temperature. Actually, there exist two well-separated electronic coherent temperatures. The higher one is for the 5f5/25f_{5/2} state [Tcoh(5f5/2)700T_{\text{coh}}(5f_{5/2}) \approx 700 K], while the lower one is for the 5f7/25f_{7/2} state [Tcoh(5f7/2)100T_{\text{coh}}(5f_{7/2}) \approx 100 K]. In addition, the quasiparticle multiples which originate from the many-body transitions among the 5f45f^{4}, 5f55f^{5}, and 5f65f^{6} electronic configurations, decay gradually. The hybridizations between the localized 5ff bands and conduction bands are subdued by high temperature. Consequently, the Fermi surface topology is changed, which signals a temperature-driven electronic Lifshitz transition. Finally, the calculated linear specific heat coefficient γ\gamma is approximately 112 mJ / (mol K2^2) at T=80T = 80 K.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2102.02034,
  title  = {Collapse of quasiparticle multiplets and $5f$ itinerant-localized crossovers in cubic phase Pu$_{3}$Ga},
  author = {Li Huang and Haiyan Lu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2102.02034},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

22 pages, 7 figures