Electronic structure and elastic properties of strongly correlated metal oxides from first principles : LSDA + U, SIC-LSDA and EELS study of UO2 and NiO

We compare experimentally observed electron energy loss spectra (EELS) of uranium dioxide UO 2 and nickel monoxide NiO with the results of ab-initio calculations carried out by using a method combining the local spin density approximation and the Hubbard U term (the LSDA + U method). We show that by taking better account of strong Coulomb correlations between electrons in the 5f shell of uranium ions in UO 2 and in the 3d shell of nickel ions in NiO it is possible to arrive at a better description of electron energy loss spectra, cohesive energies and elastic constants of both oxides compared with local spin density functional theory. For NiO we also compare the LSDA + U results and EELS spectra with a self-interaction corrected LSDA calculation.