The role of electron correlations in the electronic structure of putative Chern magnet TbMn6Sn6

Abstract

A member of the RMn6Sn6 rare-earth family materials, TbMn6Sn6, 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 TbMn6Sn6. 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 the experiment predict the Dirac crossing in bulk to be close to the Fermi level, within ~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.