Importance of effective dimensionality in manganese pnictides
In this paper we investigate the two manganese pnictides BaMn$_2$As$_2$ and LaMnAsO, using fully charge self-consistent density functional plus dynamical mean-field theory calculations. These systems have a nominally half-filled d shell, and as a consequence, electronic correlations are strong, placing these compounds at the verge of a metal-insulator transition. Although their crystal structure is composed of similar building blocks, our analysis shows that the two materials exhibit a very different effective dimensionality, LaMnAsO being a quasi-two-dimensional material in contrast to the much more three-dimensional BaMn$_2$As$_2$. We demonstrate that the experimentally observed differences in the Néel temperature, the band gap, and the optical properties of the manganese compounds under consideration can be traced back to exactly this effective dimensionality. Our calculations show excellent agreement with measured optical spectra.