Impact of strong electronic correlations on altermagnets: the case of NiS2

Abstract

One of the distinguishing features of an altermagnet is that its spin-up and spin-down bands display a nodal momentum-dependent splitting even in the absence of spin-orbit coupling. While this property has been investigated in many weakly-correlated altermagnetic materials, the impact of strong electron-electron interactions on the spin-dependent electronic structure has remained little explored, particularly in metals. Here, we propose NiS2 as a prototypical strongly correlated metallic altermagnet. While at ambient pressure this compound is an altermagnetic Mott insulator, it undergoes a pressure-driven metal-insulator transition (MIT) while maintaining its altermagnetic ordered phase. By systematically comparing DFT, DFT+U, and DFT+DMFT calculations on the metallic altermagnetic phase near the MIT, we disentangle how strong static and dynamic correlations modify the electronic structure. Specifically, the spin splitting of the bands is modified not only through the enhancement of the local magnetic moment caused by static correlations, but also by the momentum-dependent bandwidth renormalization caused by dynamic correlations. Moreover, dynamic electronic correlations cause a pronounced lifetime asymmetry between the spin-up and spin-down quasiparticles, an effect that is amplified by the particle-hole asymmetry promoted by Hund's correlations. Our results not only shed light on the rich landscape of correlation effects in metallic altermagnets, but also establishes NiS2 as a platform to investigate the interplay between Mott and Hund physics and altermagnetic order.