The Influence of One-Electron Self-Interaction on d-Electrons

Abstract: We investigate four diatomic molecules containing transition metals using two variants of hybrid functionals. We compare global hybrid functionals that only partially counteract self-interaction to local hybrid functionals that are designed to be formally free from one-electron self-interaction. As d-orbitals are prone to be particularly strongly influenced by self-interaction errors, one may have expected that self-interaction-free local hybrid functionals lead to a qualitatively different Kohn–Sham density of states than global hybrid functionals. Yet, we find that both types of hybrids lead to a very similar density of states. For both global and local hybrids alike, the intrinsic amount of exact exchange plays the dominant role in counteracting electronic self-interaction, whereas being formally free from one-electron self-interaction seems to be of lesser importance.