LDA plus DMFT Approach to Magnetocrystalline Anisotropy of Strong Magnets

The new challenges posed by the need of finding strong rare-earth-free magnets demand methods that can predict magnetization and magnetocrystalline anisotropy energy (MAE). We argue that correlated electron effects, which are normally underestimated in band-structure calculations, play a crucial role in the development of the orbital component of the magnetic moments. Because magnetic anisotropy arises from this orbital component, the ability to include correlation effects has profound consequences on our predictive power of the MAE of strong magnets. Here, we show that incorporating the local effects of electronic correlations with dynamical mean-field theory provides reliable estimates of the orbital moment, the mass enhancement, and the MAE of YCo5.