OF THE MONTH : Correlation effects in transition metals and their alloys studied by the fully self

Recent results on magnetic and spectroscopic properties of transition metals, alloys and their surfaces, which were obtained by the LSDA+DMFT approach will be reviewed in this article. We exploit the various advantageous features offered by a LSDA+DMFT implementation on the basis of the KKR band structure method. This fully self consistent approach, with respect to charge and self-energy, allows to investigate in a most realistic way the impact of correlation effects in ordered as well as disordered systems. For the latter case the coherent potential approximation (CPA) is exploited. The fully-relativistic formulation implemented for space filling potentials gives the opportunity to study various ground state properties as for example orbital magnetic moments or total energies. Experimentally, the most detailed information on the electronic properties of correlated materials can be accessed by means of angle-resolved photoemission and inverse photoemission. In several earlier studies the measured spectra were described either within a single-particle approach based on the local spin density approximation, including matrix-elementand surface effects within so called one-step model or by sophisticated many-body approaches neglecting these effects. Here, we demonstrate that the combination of the one-step model with the LSDA+DMFT gives a detailed insight and the most stringent comparison between theory and corresponding experimental data.