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Probing the interactions between interstitial hydrogen atoms in niobium through density functional theory calculations

Past experiments about hydrogen absorption in niobium have revealed specific properties about interactions between interstitial hydrogen atoms. It has been reported that there are long-range attractive and short-range repulsive interactions between interstitial hydrogen atoms in niobium. It has also been reported that these interactions are of many-body nature. While previous understanding of these interactions is based on experimental inferences from past experiments, through these calculations, for the first time, we can understand the nature of the interactions at a fundamental level. In this work, we use Density Functional Theory calculations to study the interactions of interstitial hydrogen atoms in niobium. We report here that these interactions are a combination of an attractive, indirect image interaction and a repulsive, direct interaction. Through our calculations, we also infer here that these interactions indeed have many-body characteristics.