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arXiv:1308.4043 · Physical Review A

Absence of dynamical steps in the exact correlation potential in the linear response regime

Kai Luo, Peter D. T. A. Elliott, Neepa T. Maitra

Published Oct 17, 2013• 10 citations
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Abstract

Recent work [Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 266404 (2012)] showed that the exact exchange-correlation potential of time-dependent density-functional theory generically displays dynamical step structures. These have a spatially nonlocal and time-nonlocal dependence on the density in real-time dynamics. The steps are missing in the usual approximations, which consequently yield inaccurate dynamics. Yet these same approximations often yield good linear response spectra. Here we investigate whether the steps appear in the linear response regime, when the response is calculated from a real-time dynamics simulation, by examining the exact correlation potential of model two-electron systems at various times. We find there are no step structures in regions where the system response is linear. Step structures appear in the correlation potential only in regions of space where the density response is nonlinear; these regions, having exponentially small density, do not contribute to the observables measured in linear response.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.88.042508

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Recent work [Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 266404 (2012)] showed that the exact exchange-correlation potential of time-dependent density-functional theory generically displays dynamical step structures. These have a spatially nonlocal and time-nonlocal dependence on the density in real-time dynamics. The steps are missing in the usual approximations, which consequently yield inaccurate dynamics. Yet these same approximations often yield good linear response spectra. Here we investigate whether the steps appear in the linear response regime, when the response is calculated from a real-time dynamics simulation, by examining the exact correlation potential of model two-electron systems at various times. We find there are no step structures in regions where the system response is linear. Step structures appear in the correlation potential only in regions of space where the density response is nonlinear; these regions, having exponentially small density, do not contribute to the observables measured in linear response.
The exact exchange-correlation (xc) potential of time-dependent density functional theory has been shown to have striking features. For example, step and peak features are generically found when the system is far from its ground-state, and these depend nonlocally on the density in space and time. We analyze the xc potential by decomposing it into kinetic and interaction components and comparing each with their exact-adiabatic counterparts, for a range of dynamical situations in model one-dimensional two-electron systems. We find that often, but not always, the kinetic contribution is largely responsible for these features that are missed by the adiabatic approximation. The adiabatic approximation often makes a smaller error for the interaction component, which we write in two parts, one being the Coulomb potential due to the time-dependent xc hole. Non-adiabatic features of the kinetic component were also larger than those of the interaction component in cases that we studied when there is negligible step structure. In ground-state situations, step and peak structures arise in cases of static correlation, when more than one determinant is essential to describe the interacting state. We investigate the time-dependent natural orbital occupation numbers and find the corresponding relation between these and the dynamical step is more complex than for the ground-state case.
The frequency-dependent exchange-correlation potential, which appears in the usual Kohn-Sham formulation of a time-dependent linear response problem, is a strongly nonlocal functional of the density, so that a consistent local density approximation generally does not exist. This problem can be avoided by choosing the current density as the basic variable in a generalized Kohn-Sham theory. This theory admits a local approximation which, for fixed frequency, is exact in the limit of slowly varying densities and perturbing potentials.
The exact time-dependent correlation energy in time-dependent density-functional theory is shown to sometimes become positive, which is impossible with most present TDDFT approximations. Both the correlation potential and energy can be strongly nonlocal in time. A new inequality is derived for the time-dependent exchange-correlation energy. The correlation energy appears to scale to a constant function of scaled time in the high-density limit. In the linear response regime, the correlation energy is shown to become purely adiabatic, but the correlation potential is generally nonadiabatic. The usefulness of the virial theorem as a test of numerical accuracy is demonstrated. All results are found or inspired by exact numerical solution of a simple model system (Hooke’s atom), and inversion of the corresponding Kohn–Sham equations.
The time-dependent exchange–correlation potential has the unusual task of directing fictitious non-interacting electrons to move with exactly the same probability density as true interacting electrons. This has intriguing implications for its structure, especially in the non-perturbative regime, leading to step and peak features that cannot be captured by bootstrapping any ground-state functional approximation. We review what has been learned about these features in the exact exchange–correlation potential of time-dependent density functional theory in the past decade or so and implications for the performance of simulations when electrons are driven far from any ground state.
The interacting and the Kohn-Sham static density-density response functions for different one-dimensional two-electron singlet systems are reconstructed numerically. From their inverse we obtain the exact static exchange-correlation kernel. This quantity represents the adiabatically exact approximation of the frequency-dependent exchange-correlation kernel that is crucial for time-dependent linear density-response theory. We investigate its performance for nonlocal perturbations and analyze its sum rule properties. We also compute the adiabatically exact transition energies that follow from the static kernel within linear-response theory.
The memory effect in time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) is important in simulating many time-dependent physical processes, and its implementation in real time has been a longstanding challenge, thus limiting most of TDDFT applications to either adiabatic or linear-response regime. In this paper, we conduct the non-adiabatic calculations for a one-dimensional two-electron Helium model in a triplet state using the recently formulated Sturm-Liouville-type time-local equation for the time-dependent optimized effective potential (TDOEP) with the exact exchange functional, and the results agree with the exact time-dependent Schrodinger equation solutions. It is also found that the time-dependent dipole moment and probability density calculated from the TDOEP approach are more accurate than those from the adiabatic time-dependent Krieger-Li-Iafrate (TDKLI) approximation and the adiabatic local spin density approximation. Specifically, the non-adiabatic and memory-dependent terms in the time-local TDOEP equation correctly describe the time-dependent structure of exchange-correlation potential and yield the probability density evolution. These findings should provide important insights toward future studies on memory effects in TDDFT.