Assignment of excitonic insulators in ab initio theories: The case of NiBr2

Abstract

In this work we perform a detailed first-principles analysis of the electronic and optical properties of NiBr$_2$ within the state-of-the-art $GW$+BSE scheme to determine whether this system displays negative excitonic energies, which would identify it as an (half) excitonic insulator. Particular attention is payed to the convergence of the $GW$ band structure and to the consistency between approximations employed in the ground-state calculations and approximations employed in the linear response calculations. We show that these two issues play a crucial role in identifying the excitonic nature of NiBr$_2$.