Static equation of state of bcc iron

Abstract

Body-centered-cubic (bcc) iron is one of the most investigated solid-state systems. Using four different density-functional methods, we show that there is a magnetic transition close to the ground-state volume of bcc Fe, which originates from the particular magnetic band structure. The common equation of state functions, used to determine the basic ground-state physical quantities from the calculated total energies, cannot capture the physics of this magnetic transition leading to serious underestimation of the Fe bulk modulus. Ignorance of the magnetic transition found here is reflected by large scatter of the published theoretical bulk moduli of ferromagnetic bcc Fe. Due to the low performance of the exchange-correlation functionals, most of the erroneous results are accidentally in good agreement with the experimental values. The present finding is of fundamental importance, especially taking into account that bcc Fe is frequently used as a test system in assessing the performance of exchange-correlation approximations or total-energy methods.