Dynamical Mean-Field Theory (DMFT) has established itself as a reliable and well-controlled approximation to study correlation effects in bulk solids and also two-dimensional systems. In combination with standard density-functional theory (DFT) it has been successfully applied to study materials in which localized electronic states play an important role. There are several evidences that for extended systems this DMFT+DFT approach is more accurate than the traditional DFT+U approximation, particularly because of its ability to take into account dynamical effects, such as the time-resolved double occupancy of the electronic orbitals. It was recently shown that this approach can also be successfully applied to study correlation effects in nanostructures. Here, we present a brief review of the recently proposed generalizations of the DFT+DMFT method. In particular, we discuss in details our recently proposed DFT+DMFT approach to study the magnetic properties of nanosystems[1] and present its application to small (up to five atoms) Fe andFePt clusters. We demonstrate that being a mean-field approach, DMFT produces meaningful results even for such small systems. We compare our results with those obtained using DFT+U and find that, as in the case of bulk systems, the latter approach tends to overestimate correlation effects in nanostructures. Finally, we discuss possible ways to farther improve the nano-DFT+DMFT approximation and to extend its application to molecules and nanoparticles on substrates and to nonequilibrium phenomena.

Our examination of the optical properties of small gold chains containing up to 24 atoms doped with a transition metal (TM) atom (Ni, Rh, Fe), using the time-dependent density functional theory, show the splitting of the collective plasmon peak. We associate the additional peak with a local plasmonic mode which corresponds to charge oscillations around the potential created by the dorbitals of the impurity atoms. The effect is almost independent of the position of the TM atom in the chain, as long as it is not at the chain edge. This behavior is opposite to that of larger noblemetal-TM clusters (radius >1nm), in which doping with TM atoms does not lead to generation of new modes, and often produces a suppression of the main plasmon peak.

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We study the plasmonic properties of arrays of atomic chains which comprise noble (Cu, Ag, and Au) and transition (Pd, Pt) metal atoms using time-dependent density-functional theory. We show that the response to the electromagnetic radiation is related to both physics, the geometry-dependent confinement of sp-valence electrons, and chemistry, the energy position of d-electrons in the different atomic species and the hybridization between d and sp electrons. As a result it is possible to tune the position of the surface plasmon resonance, split it to several peaks, and eventually achieve broadband absorption of radiation. Mixing the arrays with transition metals can strongly attenuate the plasmonic behaviour. We analyze the origin of these phenomena and show that they arise from rich interactions between single-particle electron-hole and collective electron excitations. The tunability of the plasmonic response of 1 arXiv:1810.00404v1 [cond-mat.mes-hall] 30 Sep 2018 arrays of atomic chains, which can be realized on solid surfaces, opens wide possibilities for their applications. In the present study we obtain guidelines how the desired properties can be achieved.

We propose a combined density-functional-theory-dynamical-mean-field-theory (DFT + DMFT) approach for reliable inclusion of electron-electron correlation effects in nanosystems. Compared with the widely used DFT + U approach, this method has several advantages, the most important of which is that it takes into account dynamical correlation effects. The formalism is illustrated through different calculations of the magnetic properties of a set of small iron clusters (number of atoms 2 ≤ N ≤ 5). It is shown that the inclusion of dynamical effects leads to a reduction in the cluster magnetization (as compared to results from DFT + U) and that, even for such small clusters, the magnetization values agree well with experimental estimations. These results justify confidence in the ability of the method to accurately describe the magnetic properties of clusters of interest to nanoscience.