Related papers: Phase stabilization by electronic entropy in pluto…
Plutonium (Pu), in which the 5$f$ valence electrons always wander the boundary between localized and itinerant states, exhibits quite complex crystal structures and unprecedentedly anomalous properties with respect to temperature and…
Electronic correlations associated with incipient magnetism have long been recognized as an important factor in stabilizing the largest atomic volume $\delta$ phase of plutonium, yet their strength compared to those in the rare earths and…
An understanding of the phase diagram of elemental plutonium (Pu) must include both the effects of the strong directional bonding and the high density of states of the Pu 5f electrons, as well as how that bonding weakens under the influence…
Plutonium is the most exotic and mysterious element in the periodic table. It has 6 metallic phases and peculiar physical properties not yet understood. One of the most intriguing properties of Pu is that relatively small changes of…
Plutonium is a critically important material as the behavior of its 5f-electrons stands midway between the metallic-like itinerant character of the light actinides and localized atomic-core-like character of the heavy actinides. The…
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 $\delta$ phase plutonium, which can be…
We have carried out a comparative study of the electronic specific heat and electronic structure of $\alpha$ and $\delta$-plutonium using dynmical mean field theory (DMFT). We use the perturbative T-matrix and fluctuating exchange (T-matrix…
We compare the trends on the strength of electronic correlations across the different phases of elemental Pu focusing on its site and orbital dependence, using a combination of density functional theory (DFT) and dynamical mean field theory…
We present a theoretical model of the electronic structure of delta-Pu that is consistent with many of the electronic structure related properties of this complex metal. In particular we show that the theory is capable of reproducing the…
Plutonium metal exhibits an anomalously large softening of its bulk modulus at elevated temperatures that is made all the more extraordinary by the finding that it occurs irrespective of whether the thermal expansion coefficient is…
Heat capacity measurements of the delta-phase stabilized alloy Pu-Al suggest that strong electron-phonon coupling is required to explain the moderate renormalization of the electronic density of states near the Fermi energy. We calculate…
We investigate the electronic structure of the highly anisotropic $\beta$ phase of metallic plutonium, within the combination of density functional theory (DFT) and dynamical mean field theory (DMFT). Its crystal structure gives rise to…
We introduce a temperature-dependent parameterization in the modified embedded-atom method and combine it with molecular dynamics to simulate the diverse physical properties of the \delta - and \epsilon - phases of elemental plutonium. The…
The electronic structure of the anomalous $\delta$-phase of Pu is analyzed by a general and exact reformulation of the exchange energy of the $f$-shell. It is found that the dominating contribution to the exchange energy is a polarization…
Void swelling can develop in materials under persistent irradiation when non-equilibrium vacancy and self-interstitial populations migrate under sufficiently asymmetric interaction biases. In conventional metals, the propensity is…
We have measured the heat capacities of $\delta-$Pu$_{0.95}$Al$_{0.05}$ and $\alpha-$Pu over the temperature range 2-303 K. The availability of data below 10 K plus an estimate of the phonon contribution to the heat capacity based on recent…
We develop a new implementation of the Gutzwiller approximation (GA) and interface it with the local density approximation (LDA). This formulation enables us to study complex $4f$ and $5f$ systems. We perform calculations of praseodymium…
The electronic structure of plutonium metal and its compounds pose a grand challenge for a fundamental understanding of the Pu-5$f$ electron character. For 30 years the plutonium chalcogenides have been especially challenging, and multiple…
The equation of state, structural behavior and phase stability of {\alpha}-uranium have been investigated up to 1.3 TPa using density functional theory, adopting a simple description of electronic structure that neglects the spin-orbit…
Plutonium's phase diagram is host to complex structures and interactions that make the description of its ground state properties elusive. Using all-electron density functional theory, we study the thermodynamic properties of $\alpha$-Pu.…