# Are electron dipolar spin-spin interactions included in DFT calculations?

I am studying point defects in hBN using Quantum ESPRESSO. It is not clear if electron spin-spin interactions are typically/can be included in DFT calculations. I understand that spin-orbit interactions can be included in the calculation by performing a noncollinear calculation with lspinorb = .true.. I have also found some papers which discuss zero-field-splitting, but cannot find much information about magnetic dipole-dipole interactions. It would make sense to me if the interaction was included in the functional, but it appears that only the Coulomb interaction is considered (I am using the HSE functional). Perhaps spin-polarized calculations somehow include the spin-spin interaction?

• +1. Welcome to the site and thank you so much for contributing your question here! We hope to see much more of you in the future!! Please take a look at the edit I made for your code block, and please say "hello" at least once in the Quantum ESPRESSO chat room!. – Nike Dattani Apr 9 at 5:00
• Thanks for the comment Nike! – Ken Apr 9 at 5:08