Abstract
A member of the RMn₆Sn₆ rare-earth family materials, TbMn₆Sn₆, recently showed experimental signatures of the realization of a quantum-limit Chern magnet. In this work, we use quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) and density functional theory with Hubbard U (DFT+U) calculations to examine the electronic structure of TbMn₆Sn₆. To do so, we optimize accurate, correlation-consistent pseudopotentials for Tb and Sn using coupled-cluster and configuration-interaction (CI) methods. We find that DFT+U and single-reference QMC calculations suffer from the same overestimation of the magnetic moments as meta-GGA and hybrid density functional approximations. Our findings point to the need for improved orbitals/wavefunctions for this class of materials, such as natural orbitals from CI, or for the inclusion of multi-reference effects that capture the static correlations for an accurate prediction of magnetic properties. DFT+U with Mn magnetic moments adjusted to experiment predict the Dirac crossing in bulk to be close to the Fermi level, within ∼ 120 meV, in agreement with the experiments. Our non-stoichiometric slab calculations show that the Dirac crossing approaches even closer to the Fermi level, suggesting the possible realization of Chern magnetism in this limit.