Doubly Screened Coulomb Correction Approach for Strongly Correlated Systems

Strongly correlated systems containing d/f electrons present a challenge to conventional density functional theory such as the local density approximation or generalized gradient approximation. We developed a doubly screened Coulomb correction (DSCC) approach to perform on-site Coulomb interaction correction for strongly correlated materials. The on-site Coulomb interaction between localized d/f electrons is self-consistently determined from a model dielectric function that includes both the static dielectric and Thomas-Fermi screening. We applied DSCC to simulate the electronic and magnetic properties of typical 3d, 4f, and 5f strongly correlated systems. The accuracy of DSCC is comparable to that of hybrid functionals but an order of magnitude faster. In addition, DSCC can reflect the difference in the Coulomb interaction between metallic and insulating situations, similar to the popular but computationally expensive constrained random phase approximation approach. This feature suggests that DSCC is also a promising method for simulating Coulomb interaction parameters.