Electronic structure and metallization of cubic GdH3 under pressure: Ab initio many-body GW calculations

The electronic structures of the cubic GdH3 are extensively investigated using the ab initio many-body GW calculations treating the Gd 4f electrons either in the core (4f-core) or in the valence states (4f-val). Different degrees of quasiparticle (QP) self-consistent calculations with the different starting points are used to correct the failures of the GGA/GGA + U/HSE03 calculations. In the 4f-core case, GGA + G0W0 calculations give a fundamental band gap of 1.72 eV, while GGA+ GW0 or GGA + GW calculations present a larger band gap. In the 4f-val case, the nonlocal exchange-correlation (xc) functional HSE03 can account much better for the strong localization of the 4f states than the semilocal or Hubbard U corrected xc functional in the Kohn–Sham equation. We show that the fundamental gap of the antiferromagnetic (AFM) or ferromagnetic (FM) GdH3 can be opened up by solving the QP equation with improved starting point of eigenvalues and wave functions given by HSE03. The HSE03 + G0W0 calculations present a fundamental band gap of 2.73 eV in the AFM configuration, and the results of the corresponding GW0 and GW calculations are 2.89 and 3.03 eV, respectively. In general, for the cubic structure, the fundamental gap from G0W0 calculations in the 4f-core case is the closest to the real result. By G0W0 calculations in the 4f-core case, we find that H or Gd defects can strongly affect the band structure, especially the H defects. We explain the mechanism in terms of the possible electron correlation on the hydrogen site. Under compression, the insulator-to-metal transition in the cubic GdH3 occurs around 40 GPa, which might be a satisfied prediction.