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Subhasish Mandal

Publications and source records attributed to Subhasish Mandal.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

A First-Principles Multiscale Framework for Topological Superconductivity

A microscopic understanding of topological superconductivity (TSC) in real materials requires a materials-informed approach that integrates first-principles electronic structure, superconductivity, and topology within a unified computational framework. Here, we develop such an approach by combining density functional theory, Wannier-based low-energy Hamiltonians, Bogoliubov-de Gennes theory, and Matsubara Green's-function-based Chern number calculations performed directly on realistic multiorbital superconducting Hamiltonians. We apply this framework to bulk-like and monolayer FeTeSe and to FeSe/GaAs heterostructures, enabling a unified investigation of both intrinsic and proximity-induced topological superconductivity. We identify key electronic-structure ingredients that promote robust TSC, including Rashba-active states near the Fermi level, strong induced superconducting pairing, and substantial orbital hybridization between spin-orbit-active and superconducting sectors. Guided by these design principles, we predict multiple topological superconducting phases in Fe-based materials and demonstrate that FeSe/GaAs heterostructures are particularly promising, exhibiting topological transitions at experimentally accessible chemical potentials and low Zeeman fields. Complementing the theoretical predictions, we demonstrate the growth and structural characterization of FeSe/GaAs heterostructures, establishing the experimental feasibility of the proposed materials platform. Our results provide a quantitative route for engineering and screening candidate Majorana materials and heterostructures directly from realistic electronic structures and establish a foundation for future materials-by-design approaches to topological superconductivity.

cond-mat.supr-con

Systematic dynamical mean-field theory study of 3d perovskite oxides with uniform Coulomb interactions

Strongly correlated transition-metal perovskite oxides pose a fundamental challenge for electronic-structure theory and for large-scale, data-driven materials discovery. While DFT+DMFT provides a quantitatively accurate description of such systems, its high-throughput application is hindered by the need to determine material-specific Coulomb interaction parameters ($U$). First-principles approaches such as the cRPA predict a highly nonlinear and non-transferable evolution of the interaction strength across chemically similar ABO$_3$ perovskites. Here we show that this paradigm does not extend to the large-energy-window eDMFT, which employs highly localized orbitals and treats electronic correlations and screening self-consistently within the same many-body framework. As a result, spectral properties are governed primarily by the dynamical self-energy rather than by static interaction-induced energy shifts. Recent constrained-eDMFT calculations demonstrated that, for broad classes of $3d$ transition-metal oxides, the self-consistently screened Coulomb interactions naturally fall within relatively narrow ranges for correlated metals and insulators. Motivated by these findings, we implement a high-throughput eDMFT framework employing physically derived interaction values of $U=6$ eV for metals and $U=10$ eV for insulators together with $exact$ double counting. We test this framework using systematic high-throughput eDMFT calculations for ABO$_3$ compounds (A = Ca, Sr, La; B = V--Ni) and benchmark the resulting spectral functions against photoemission experiments, where we find overall excellent agreement. Our results establish that charge self-consistent eDMFT enables robust, parameter-tuning-free high-throughput many-body calculations for correlated oxides, opening a practical pathway toward predictive electronic-structure databases for strongly correlated materials.

cond-mat.str-el

Self-Consistent Coulomb Interactions from Constrained Dynamical Mean-Field Theory

We develop a self-consistent first-principles framework for determining the screened Coulomb interaction strength (U) based on constrained dynamical mean-field theory (cDMFT). Unlike conventional approaches, this method incorporates essential vertex corrections within the same embedded-DMFT formalism used for the electronic structure calculation. Using the cDMFT-derived interaction strengths as input to embedded DMFT yields spectral functions in excellent agreement with photoemission experiments across a wide range of materials, spanning 3d to 5d transition-metal compounds, including correlated metals, Mott insulators, altermagnets, and unconventional superconductors. This unified many-body framework establishes a systematic first-principles route for determining interaction strengths in correlated materials and substantially enhances the predictive power of DFT+DMFT and its extensions.

cond-mat.str-el

Accelerated prediction of dielectric functions in solar cell materials with graph neural networks

We present an atomistic line graph neural network (ALIGNN) model for predicting dielectric functions directly from crystal structures. Trained on $\sim$7000 dielectric functions from the JARVIS-DFT database computed with a meta-GGA exchange-correlation functional, the model accurately reproduces spectral features, including peak intensities and overall line shapes, while enabling efficient high-throughput screening. Applied to the recently developed Alexandria materials database, containing over four hundred thousand insulating materials, we uncover a clear elemental trend, with vanadium emerging as a strong indicator of materials with high-spectroscopic limited maximum efficiency (SLME). In particular, vanadium-based perovskite materials show a substantially higher fraction of high-SLME compounds compared to the database average, underscoring their promise for optoelectronic applications.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Correlation Enhanced Electron-Phonon Coupling in FeSe/SrTiO$_3$ at a Magic Angle

While a predictive theory for unconventional superconductivity in Fe-based superconductors remains elusive, an extensively debated aspect is the interaction between phonons and strongly correlated electrons, and its potential role in the pairing mechanism. Here, through the combination of first principles dynamical mean field theory calculations and epitaxial growth of the single-layer FeX (X=Se, S, Te) on SrTiO$_3$ (STO)(001) substrate, which facilitates the controlled distortion of the FeX$_4$ tetrahedron, we demonstrate an unique superconducting dome where the superconducting gap peaks at a `magic' angle of the FeX$_4$ tetrahedron and the electron-phonon coupling (EPC) for the A$_{1g}$ mode is maximized for the FeSe film. Our findings uncover a significant role of electronic correlations in strengthening Cooper pairing in unconventional superconductors by enhancing EPC.

cond-mat.str-el

Light-driven lattice metastability for enhanced superconductivity in FeSe/SrTiO3

Driven quantum materials with on demand properties controlled by external stimuli are critical for emergent quantum technology. In optically tunable superconducting heterostructures, the lattice responses at the buried interface may hold the key to the light susceptibility but is very challenging to detect. In this work, a nondestructive synchrotron-based X-ray scattering phase-retrieval technique is implemented in monolayer-FeSe/SrTiO3 heterostructures to capture the three-dimensional interfacial atomic displacements in-situ as the interface superconductivity is actively manipulated by light. It is found that the interlayer sliding between FeSe and SrTiO3 can drastically alter how the lattice responds to the light. In domains with selected stacking configurations, the interface transforms the very weak photoexcitation in SrTiO3 into significant Fe-atom displacements in FeSe and generate metastable interfacial structures that can lead to a persistent superconductivity enhancement. These findings demonstrate an effective strategy for achieving greatly amplified light-lattice coupling for efficient quantum phase manipulations at designed interfaces.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci

A Topological Superconductor Tuned by Electronic Correlations

A topological superconductor, characterized by either a chiral order parameter or a chiral topological surface state in proximity to bulk superconductivity, is foundational to topological quantum computing. As in other topological phases of matter, electronic correlations can tune topological superconductivity via modifications of the low-energy Fermiology. Such tuning has not been realized so far. Here we uncover a unique topological superconducting phase in competition with electronic correlations in 10-unit-cell thick FeTe$_{x}$Se$_{1-x}$ films grown on SrTiO$_{3}$ substrates. When the Te content $x$ exceeds $0.7$, we observe a rapid increase of the effective mass for the Fe $d_{xy}$ band, with the emergence of a superconducting topological surface state confirmed by high-resolution angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy; however, near the FeTe limit, the system enters an incoherent regime where the topological surface state becomes unidentifiable and superconductivity is suppressed. Theory suggests that the electron-electron interactions in the odd-parity $xy^-$ band with a strong $d_{xy}$ character lead to an orbital-selective correlated phase. Our work establishes FeTe$_{x}$Se$_{1-x}$ thin films as a unique platform where electronic correlations sensitively modulate topological superconductivity, suggesting opportunities to use tunable electron-electron interactions to engineer new topological phases in a broad class of materials.

cond-mat.supr-con

Unraveling Enhanced Superconductivity in Single-layer FeSe through Substrate Surface Terminations

Single-layer FeSe films grown on (001) SrTiO3 substrates have shown a significant increase in superconducting transition temperature compared to bulk FeSe. Several mechanisms have been proposed to explain such enhancement, including electron doping, interfacial electron-phonon coupling, and strong electron correlations. To pinpoint the primary driver, we grew FeSe films on SrTiO3 substrates with coexisting TiO2 and SrO surface terminations. Scanning tunneling spectroscopy revealed a larger superconducting gap of 17 meV for FeSe on TiO2 compared to 11 meV on SrO. Tunneling spectroscopy also showed a larger work function on SrO, leading to reduced charge transfer, as confirmed by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. Scanning transmission electron microscopy revealed distinctive interfacial atomic-scale structures, with the Se-Fe-Se tetrahedral angle changing from 109.9{\deg} on SrO to 105.1{\deg} on TiO2. Compared to dynamical mean field theory calculations, these results suggest optimal electron correlations in FeSe/TiO2 for enhancing high-temperature superconductivity.

cond-mat.supr-con

High-throughput Search for Metallic Altermagnets by Embedded Dynamical Mean Field Theory

Altermagnets (AM) are a novel class of magnetic materials with zero net magnetization but broken time-reversal symmetry and spin-split bands exceeding the spin-orbit coupling scale, offering unique control of individual spin-channel and high charge-spin conversion efficiency for spintronic applications. Still, only a few metallic altermagnets have been identified, and discovering them through trial-and-error is resource-intensive. Here, we introduce a high-throughput screening strategy to accelerate the discovery of materials with altermagnetic properties. By combining density functional theory (DFT) with embedded dynamical mean-field theory (eDMFT), our approach improves the accuracy in predicting metallicity and spin splitting, especially in transition-metal-rich compounds. An automated workflow incorporates pre-screening and symmetry analysis to reduce both human effort and computational cost. This approach identified two previously unreported metallic altermagnets, CrSe and CaFe4Al8 (in addition to two known altermagnets, CrSb and RuO2), as well as a dozen semiconducting altermagnets among over 2,000 magnetic materials. Our findings reveal that while altermagnets are abundant among magnetic materials, only a tiny fraction is metallic.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Spin Selective Evolution of Zhang-Rice State in Binary Transition Metal Oxide

The Zhang-Rice (ZR) state is a strongly hybridized bound state formed by the transition metal and oxygen atoms. The spin-fluctuations within the ZR state are known to play an important role in high-$T_\mathrm{c}$ superconductivity in cuprates. Here, we employ a combination of angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS), and {\it ab initio} embedded dynamical mean-field theory (eDMFT) to investigate the influence of magnetic ordering on the spectral characteristics of the valence band and Mn 2$p$ core-level in MnO (001) ultrathin films. Our results demonstrate that a complex spin-selective evolution of Mn 3$d$$-$O 2$p$ hybridization develops due to the long-range antiferromagnetic (AFM) ordering. This hybridization significantly alters the spectral shape and weight of the ZR state. Specifically, in the AFM phase, we observed the sharpening of the ZR state and band folding with the periodicity of the AFM unit cell of MnO(001). We also demonstrated a strong connection between the spectral evolution of the ZR state and the non-local screening channels of the photoexcited core holes. Further, our detailed temperature-dependent study reveals the presence of short-range antiferromagnetic correlations that exist at much higher temperatures than $T_\mathrm{N}$. Such comprehensive studies showing the evolution of the ZR state across the magnetic transitions and its implication to the core-hole screening have never been reported in any 3$d$ binary transition metal oxides.

cond-mat.str-el

The role of electron correlations in the electronic structure of putative Chern magnet TbMn$_6$Sn$_6$

A member of the RMn$_6$Sn$_6$ rare-earth family materials, TbMn$_6$Sn$_6$, recently showed experimental signatures of the realization of a quantum-limit Chern magnet. In this work, we use quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) and density functional theory with Hubbard $U$ (DFT$+U$) calculations to examine the electronic structure of TbMn$_6$Sn$_6$. To do so, we optimize accurate, correlation-consistent pseudopotentials for Tb and Sn using coupled-cluster and configuration-interaction (CI) methods. We find that DFT$+U$ and single-reference QMC calculations suffer from the same overestimation of the magnetic moments as meta-GGA and hybrid density functional approximations. Our findings point to the need for improved orbitals/wavefunctions for this class of materials, such as natural orbitals from CI, or for the inclusion of multi-reference effects that capture the static correlations for an accurate prediction of magnetic properties. DFT$+U$ with Mn magnetic moments adjusted to experiment predict the Dirac crossing in bulk to be close to the Fermi level, within $\sim 120$ meV, in agreement with the experiments. Our non-stoichiometric slab calculations show that the Dirac crossing approaches even closer to the Fermi level, suggesting the possible realization of Chern magnetism in this limit.

cond-mat.str-el

Electronic correlation in nearly free electron metals with beyond-DFT methods

For more than three decades, nearly free electron elemental metals have been a topic of debate because the computed bandwidths are significantly wider in the local density approximation to density-functional theory (DFT) than indicated by angle-resolved photoemission (ARPES) experiments. Here, we systematically investigate this using first-principles calculations for alkali and alkaline-earth metals using DFT and various beyond-DFT methods such as meta-GGA, G$_0$W$_0$, hybrid functionals (YS-PBE0, B3LYP), and LDA+eDMFT. We find that the static non-local exchange, as partly included in the hybrid functionals, significantly increase the bandwidths even compared to LDA, while the G$_0$W$_0$ bands are only slightly narrower than in LDA. The agreement with the ARPES is best when the local approximation to the self-energy is used in the LDA+eDMFT method. We infer that even moderately correlated systems with partially occupied s-orbitals, which were assumed to approximate the uniform electron gas, are very well described in terms of short-range dynamical correlations that are only local to an atom.

cond-mat.str-el

The Joint Automated Repository for Various Integrated Simulations (JARVIS) for data-driven materials design

The Joint Automated Repository for Various Integrated Simulations (JARVIS) is an integrated infrastructure to accelerate materials discovery and design using density functional theory (DFT), classical force-fields (FF), and machine learning (ML) techniques. JARVIS is motivated by the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) principles of developing open-access databases and tools to reduce the cost and development time of materials discovery, optimization, and deployment. The major features of JARVIS are: JARVIS-DFT, JARVIS-FF, JARVIS-ML, and JARVIS-Tools. To date, JARVIS consists of 40,000 materials and 1 million calculated properties in JARVIS-DFT, 1,500 materials and 110 force-fields in JARVIS-FF, and 25 ML models for material-property predictions in JARVIS-ML, all of which are continuously expanding. JARVIS-Tools provides scripts and workflows for running and analyzing various simulations. We compare our computational data to experiments or high-fidelity computational methods wherever applicable to evaluate error/uncertainty in predictions. In addition to the existing workflows, the infrastructure can support a wide variety of other technologically important applications as part of the data-driven materials design paradigm. The JARVIS datasets and tools are publicly available at the website: https://jarvis.nist.gov .

cond-mat.mtrl-sci

All electron GW with linearized augmented plane waves for metals and semiconductors

GW approximation is one of the most popular parameter-free many-body methods that goes beyond the limitations of the standard density functional theory (DFT) to determine the excitation spectra for moderately correlated materials and in particular the semiconductors. It is also the first step in developing the diagrammatic Monte Carlo method into an electronic structure tool, which would offer a numerically exact solution to the solid-state problem. Currently, most electronic structure packages support GW calculations for the band-insulating materials, while the support for the metallic system remains limited to only a few implementations. The metallic systems are challenging for GW, as it requires one to accurately resolve the Fermi surface singularities, which demands a dense momentum mesh. Here we implement GW algorithm within the all-electron Linear Augmented Plane Wave framework, where we pay special attention to the metallic systems, the convergence with respect to momentum mesh and proper treatment of the deep laying core states, as needed for the future variational diagrammatic Monte Carlo implementation. Our improved algorithm for resolving Fermi surface singularities allows us a stable and accurate analytic continuation of imaginary axis data, which is carried out for GW excitation spectra throughout the Brillouin zone in both the metallic and insulating materials, and is compared to numerically more stable contour deformation integration technique. We compute band structures for elemental metallic systems Li, Na, and Mg as well as for various narrow and wide bandgap insulators such as Si, BN, SiC, MgO, LiF, ZnS, and CdS and compare our results with previous GW calculations and available experiments data. Our results are in good agreement with the available literature.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Influence of magnetic ordering on the spectral properties of binary transition metal oxides

Using the ab initio embedded DMFT (eDMFT) approach, we study the effect of long-range magnetic ordering on the spectral properties in the binary transition metal oxides, and find that the most significant changes appear in the momentum resolved spectral functions, which sharpen into quite well-defined bands in the antiferromagnetic (AFM) phase. The strongest change across the transition is found at the topmost valence band edge (VBE), which is commonly associated with the Zhang-Rice bound state. This VBE state strengthens in the AFM phase, but only for the minority spin component, which is subject to stronger fluctuations. A similar hybridized VBE state also appears in the DFT single-particle description of the AFM phase, but gets much stronger and acquires a well-defined energy in the eDMFT description.

cond-mat.str-el

Systematic beyond-DFT study of binary transition metal oxides

Various methods going beyond density-functional theory (DFT), such as DFT+U, hybrid functionals, meta-GGAs, GW, and DFT-embedded dynamical mean field theory (eDMFT), have been developed to describe the electronic structure of correlated materials, but it is unclear how accurate these methods can be expected to be when applied to a given strongly correlated solid. It is thus of pressing interest to compare their accuracy as they apply to different categories of materials. Here, we introduce a novel paradigm in which a chosen set of beyond-DFT methods is systematically and uniformly tested on a chosen class of materials. For a first application, we choose the target materials to be the binary transition-metal oxides FeO, CoO, MnO, and NiO in their antiferromagnetic phase and present a head-to-head comparison of spectral properties as computed using the various methods. We also compare with available experimental angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), inverse-photoemission spectroscopy, and with optical absorption. We find both B3LYP and eDMFT can reproduce the experiments quite well, with eDMFT doing best in particular when comparing with the ARPES data.

cond-mat.str-el

Suppression of the Spectral Weight of Topological Surface States on the Nanoscale via Local Symmetry Breaking

In topological crystalline insulators the topological conducting surface states are protected by crystal symmetry, in principle making it possible to pattern nanoscale insulating and conductive motifs solely by breaking local symmetries on an otherwise homogenous, single-phase material. We show using scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy that defects that break local symmetry of SnTe suppress electron tunneling over an energy range as large as the bulk band gap, an order of magnitude larger than that produced globally via magnetic fields or uniform structural perturbations. Complementary ab initio calculations show how local symmetry breaking obstructs topological surface states as shown by a threefold reduction of the spectral weight of the topological surface states. The finding highlights the potential benefits of manipulating the surface morphology to create devices that take advantage of the unique properties of topological surface states and can operate at practical temperatures.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Scalable GW software for quasiparticle properties using OpenAtom

The GW method, which can describe accurately electronic excitations, is one of the most widely used ab initio electronic structure technique and allows the physics of both molecular and condensed phase materials to be studied. However, the applications of the GW method to large systems require supercomputers and highly parallelized software to overcome the high computational complexity of the method scaling as $O(N^4)$. Here, we develop efficient massively-parallel GW software for the plane-wave basis set by revisiting the standard GW formulae in order to discern the optimal approaches for each phase of the GW calculation for massively parallel computation. These best numerical practices are implemented into the OpenAtom software which is written on top of charm++ parallel framework. We then evaluate the performance of our new software using range of system sizes. Our GW software shows significantly improved parallel scaling compared to publically available GW software on the Mira and Blue Waters supercomputers, two of largest most powerful platforms in the world.

physics.comp-ph