Ab-initio many-body theory for correlated electron systems
Trieste, Italy, 25 - 29 August 2003
Sponsored by:
ESF Psi-k Programme RTN on f-electrons CCP9, U.K. ICTP, Trieste, Italy
This Euroconference was motivated by recent exciting developments at the interface between two fields: that of ab-initio (density-functional based) calculations of the electronic structure of solids, and that of many-body techniques designed to handle the effects of strong electronic correlations. It is hardly necessary to emphasize the broad range of physical phenomena and potential applications of strongly correlated materials (containing incomplete d- and f-shells), such as: transition metals and their oxides as well as rare earth and actinide compounds. In those systems, many physical effects compete in a quantitative manner, so that simple models provide only general guidelines, which must be supplemented by more quantitative techniques. Recently, DFT-LDA methods have been combined with many body techniques (in particular Dynamical-Mean-Field Theory-DMFT) in order to achieve these goals.
The sessions of this Euroconference covered the latest technical developments, some targeted applications and selected recent experimental results. In more detail:
The technical topics which were stressed at this conference were:
- Dynamical Mean Field Theory and electronic structure calculations
- Recent developments in the GW approximation. This includes in particular issues related to selfconsistency, and recent efforts to combine GW with DMFT towards a first-principles electronic structure method for strongly correlated electron systems
- Latest developments and applications of Quantum Monte Carlo methods
- Time-dependent DFT
- Ab-initio few-orbital Hamiltonians from downfolding techniques
The applications of the methods were:
- f-electron systems
- transition metal oxides
- diluted magnetic semiconductors
- nanoelectronics
Experimental talks covered the application of spectroscopy techniques, optical and high energy photoemission, and pressure measurements to correlated systems.
More than 120 participants attended the conference, making it an extremely lively event. Several communities were represented at this meeting, such as many-body theoreticians, band-theory theoreticians and expertimentalists, making the meeting extremely useful. One particular GW person picked up a lot of new ideas by attending talks from outside the GW realm. For anyone interested, the transparancies of the talks can be found on the ICTP web page:
http://www.ictp.trieste.it/-smrl5l2/contributionspage.html
More details may be found in newsletter 59 from page 11
