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The layered transition metal dichalcogenide 1T-TiSe$_2$ is of great research interest, having intriguing properties of charge density waves (CDW) and superconductivity under doping or pressurizing. The monolayer form of 1T-TiSe$_2$ also shows a CDW with a higher transition temperature T_c than the bulk, indicating a stronger CDW interaction. By using the meta-generalized gradient approximation (metaGGA)-based model Bethe-Salpeter Equation (BSE) and many-body perturbation GW+BSE methods, we calculate the exciton binding energies and electron energy loss spectrum (EELS) for the 1T-TiSe$_2$ monolayer under different in-plane biaxial strains. We find that even without strain the 1T-TiSe$_2$ monolayer can have negative exciton energies at the Brillouin zone boundary point M, with a binding energy larger than the gap. The calculated EELS reinforces this picture, indicating EI (exciton insulator) states in 1T-TiSe$_2$ monolayer even without strain. The Wannier-Mott formula calculations of exciton binding energy corroborate results from GW+BSE. Small compressive strains enhance the EI state, and for tensile strains slightly less than 3%, the EI state in this monolayer persists. At large tensile strains, the material makes a transition to a normal semiconductor. Our results provide important information for understanding the quantum nature of this two-dimensional (2D) material. Our results from the standard G0W0@PBE+SOC+U+BSE approach are not qualitatively different from those of a more computationally efficient metaGGA-based SCAN+SOC+U+mBSE+$f_{xc}^{loc}$ approach that employs a model BSE.

Semi-local density functional approximations are widely used. None of them can capture the long-range van der Waals (vdW) attraction between separated subsystems, but they differ remarkably in the extent to which they capture intermediate-range vdW effects responsible for equilibrium bonds between neighboring small closed-shell subsystems. The local density approximation (LDA) often overestimates this effect, while the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) generalized gradient approximation (GGA) underestimates it. The strongly-constrained and appropriately normed (SCAN) meta-GGA often estimates it well. All of these semi-local functionals require an additive non-local correction such as the revised Vydrov-Van Voorhis 2010 (rVV10) to capture the long-range part. This work reports adsorption energies and the corresponding geometry of the aromatic thiophene (C$_4$H$_4$S) bound to transition metal surfaces. The adsorption process requires a genuine interplay of covalent and weak binding and requires a simultaneously accurate description of surface and adsorption energies with the correct prediction of the adsorption site. All these quantities must come from well balanced short and long-range correlation effects for a universally applicable method for weak interactions with chemical accuracy.