We present a detailed analysis of the one-electron physics of the actinides. Various linear muffin-tin orbital basis sets are analyzed in order to determine a robust bare Hamiltonian for the actinides. The hybridization between $f$ and $spd$ states is compared with the $f\text{−}f$ hopping in order to understand the Anderson-like and Hubbard-like contributions to itineracy in the actinides. We show that both contributions decrease strongly as one moves from the light actinides to the heavy actinides, while the Anderson-like contribution dominates in all cases. A real-space analysis of the band structure shows that nearest-neighbor hopping dominates the physics in these materials. Finally, we discuss the implications of our results to the delocalization transition as a function of atomic number across the actinide series.

• Received 8 August 2007

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.76.155126