Comment on “Sodium PyroxeneNaTiSi2O6: Possible Haldane Spin-1 Chain System”

Abstract

Magnetic and electronic properties of NaTiSi$_2$O$_6$ in low temperature phase were studied in the framework of the LDA+U approximation. We stress that neglecting correlation effects in LSDA calculations one obtains not only several times smaller value of the band gap, but also fails to describe magnetic properties of NaTiSi$_2$O$_6$. Our LDA+U results confirm formation of singlet Ti-Ti dimers in low temperature phase of NaTiSi$_2$O$_6$ driven by corresponding orbital ordering [J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 71, 1423 (2002)], but strongly disagree with the LSDA results and interpretations of Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 036401 (2004).