Spiky density of states in large complex Al-Mn phases

Overview & Synopsis

First-principle electronic structure calculations have been performed in crystalline complex phases mu-Al4Mn and lambda-Al4Mn using the TB-LMTO method. These atomic structures, related to quasicrystalline structures, contain about 560 atoms in a large hexagonal unit cell. One of the main characteristic of their density of states is the presence of fine peaks the so-called ``spiky structure''. From multiple-scattering calculations in real space, we show that these fine peaks are not artifacts in ab-initio calculations, since they result from a specific localization of electrons by atomic clusters of different length scales.