Solids with weak and strong electron correlations

Abstract

A number of methods are discussed which may serve for a treatment of electron correlations in solids. When the electron correlations are relatively weak like in semiconductors or a number of ionic crystals one may start from a self-consistent field calculation and include correlations by quantum chemical methods. An incremental computational scheme enables us to obtain results of high quality for the ground state of those systems. A number of examples demonstrates that explicitely. Solids with strongly correlated electrons require the use of model Hamiltonians. With their help one can tackle the problem of determining spectral densities for those systems. The projection technique is a useful tool here. In strongly correlated $f$ electron systems electron or holes can crystallize with quite different physical consequences as in the case of a Wigner crystal or Verwey transition. Finally, different routes to heavy-fermion behavior are discussed, another hallmark of strongly correlated electrons.