In this paper, an alternative method to range-separated linear-response time-dependent density-functional theory and perturbation theory is proposed to improve the estimation of the energies of a physical system from the energies of a partially interacting system. Starting from the analysis of the Taylor expansion of the energies of the partially interacting system around the physical system, we use an extrapolation scheme to improve the estimation of the energies of the physical system at an intermediate point of the range-separated or linear adiabatic connection where either the electron--electron interaction is scaled or only the long-range part of the Coulomb interaction is included. The extrapolation scheme is first applied to the range-separated energies of the helium and beryllium atoms and of the hydrogen molecule at its equilibrium and stretched geometries. It improves significantly the convergence rate of the energies toward their exact limit with respect to the range-separation parameter. The range-separated extrapolation scheme is compared with a similar approach for the linear adiabatic connection, highlighting the relative strengths and weaknesses of each approach.
In this paper, an alternative method to range-separated linear-response time-dependent density-functional theory and perturbation theory is proposed to improve the estimation of the energies of a physical system from the energies of a partially interacting system. Starting from the analysis of the Taylor expansion of the energies of the partially interacting system around the physical system, we use an extrapolation scheme to improve the estimation of the energies of the physical system at an intermediate point of the range-separated or linear adiabatic connection where either the electron--electron interaction is scaled or only the long-range part of the Coulomb interaction is included. The extrapolation scheme is first applied to the range-separated energies of the helium and beryllium atoms and of the hydrogen molecule at its equilibrium and stretched geometries. It improves significantly the convergence rate of the energies toward their exact limit with respect to the range-separation parameter. The range-separated extrapolation scheme is compared with a similar approach for the linear adiabatic connection, highlighting the relative strengths and weaknesses of each approach.
We have calculated the correlation energy of the homogeneous electron gas (HEG) and the dissociation energy curves of molecules with covalent bonds from an efficient implementation of the adiabatic connection fluctuation dissipation expression including the exact-exchange (EXX) kernel. The EXX kernel is defined from first-order perturbation theory and used in the Dyson equation of time-dependent density-functional theory. Within this approximation (RPAx), the correlation energies of the HEG are significantly improved with respect to the random phase approximation (RPA) up to densities of the order of ${r}_{s}\ensuremath{\approx}10$. However, beyond this value, the RPAx response function exhibits an unphysical divergence and the approximation breaks down. Total energies of molecules at equilibrium are also highly accurate, but we find a similar instability at stretched geometries. Staying within an exact first-order approximation to the response function, we use an alternative resummation of the higher-order terms. This slight redefinition of RPAx fixes the instability in total energy calculations without compromising the overall accuracy of the approach.
In this work we consider a numerically solvable model of a two-electron diatomic molecule to study a recently proposed approximation based on the density functional theory of so-called strictly correlated electrons (SCE). We map out the full two-particle wave function for a wide range of bond distances and interaction strengths and obtain analytic results for the two-particle states and eigenenergies in various limits of strong and weak interactions, and in the limit of large bond distance. We then study the so-called Hartree-exchange-correlation (Hxc) kernel of time-dependent density functional theory which is a key ingredient in calculating excitation energies. We study an approximation based on adiabatic SCE (ASCE) theory which was shown to display a particular feature of the exact Hxc kernel, namely, a spatial divergence as function of the bond distance. This makes the ASCE kernel a candidate for correcting a notorious failure of the commonly used adiabatic local density approximation (ALDA) in the calculation of excitation energies of dissociating molecules. Unlike the ALDA, we obtain nonzero excitation energies from the ASCE kernel in the dissociation regime but they do not correspond to those of the true spectrum unless the interaction strength is taken to be very large such that the SCE theory has the right regime of validity, in which case the excitation energies become exact and represent the so-called zero-point oscillations of the strictly correlated electrons. The commonly studied physical dissociation regime, namely, large molecular separation at intermediate interaction strength, therefore remains a challenge for density functional approximations based on SCE theory.
New methods to efficiently calculate energetics and first order-properties for mean-field and correlated electronic structure theories are presented. In linear-scaling short-range hybrid calculations new integral screening criteria exploiting the locality of the attenuated Coulomb operator are introduced that allow to significantly increase the performance of these density functionals. This enables short-range hybrid calculations at a similar cost as pure semi-local density functional theory (DFT) calculations with increased accuracy due to the admixture of exchange. At the level of correlated electronic structure theory, the realm of systems which can be calculated with a linear-scaling random-phase-approximation (RPA) method is extended with a novel multi-node parallel algorithm. Furthermore, more efficient quadrature schemes are used based on the equivalence of the employed integral transforms with the Fourier transform of the non-interacting polarizability. In combination with a new way to introduce Cholesky orbitals this results in a more effient and numerically more accurate linear-scaling RPA correlation energy method with improved memory requirements. Combining these techniques further with an approach to calculate analytical first order properties using quantities from many body perturbation theory, allows to present a low-scaling method that gives access to RPA gradients for molecular systems with several hundred atoms. Moreover linear- and low-scaling methods to calculate different beyond RPA correlation energies are devised, exploiting the locality of exchange type contractions. This enables to apply these more accurate RPA methods to significantly larger systems, which allows to demonstrate the gain in accuracy for large, dispersion dominated systems. The newly developed methods extend the scope of RPA and RPA with exchange correlation energies, and first order RPA properties significantly, while the accuracy is under full numerical control. Furthermore, there is no overhead to the respective canonical algorithm, making the presented methods competitive also for small system sizes. Finally, a new beyond RPA scheme is presented that combines the benefits of plain RPA and RPA with second-order screened exchange, leading to a more balanced, highly accurate post Kohn-Sham method.
We present a rigorous framework which combines single-particle Green's function theory with density functional theory based on a separation of electron-electron interactions into short- and long-range components. Short-range contribution to the total energy and exchange-correlation potential is provided by a density functional approximation, while the long-range contribution is calculated using an explicit many-body Green's function method. Such a hybrid results in a nonlocal, dynamic, and orbital-dependent exchange-correlation functional of a single-particle Green's function. In particular, we present a range-separated hybrid functional called srSVWN5-lrGF2 which combines the local-density approximation and the second-order Green's function theory. We illustrate that similarly to density functional approximations, the new functional is weakly basis-set dependent. Furthermore, it offers an improved description of the short-range dynamic correlation. The many-body contribution to the functional mitigates the many-electron self-interaction error present in many density functional approximations and provides a better description of molecular properties. Additionally, we illustrate that the new functional can be used to scale down the self-energy and, therefore, introduce an additional sparsity to the self-energy matrix that in the future can be exploited in calculations for large molecules or periodic systems.
We propose a method that employs functionals of the one-electron reduced density matrix (density matrix) to capture long-range effects of electron correlation. The complementary short-range regime is treated with density functionals. In an effort to find approximations for the long-range density-matrix functional, a modified power functional is applied to the homogeneous electron gas with Coulomb interactions replaced by their corresponding long-range counterparts. For the power $\ensuremath{\beta}=1/2$ and the range-separation parameter $\ensuremath{\omega}=1/{r}_{s}$, the functional reproduces the correlation and the kinetic correlation energies with a remarkable accuracy for intermediate and large values of rs. Analysis of the Euler equation corresponding to this functional reveals correct rs expansion of the correlation energy in the limit of large rs. The first expansion coefficient is in very good agreement with that obtained from the modified Wigner-Seitz model.
We consider an analytically solvable model of two interacting electrons that allows for the calculation of the exact exchange-correlation kernel of time-dependent density functional theory. This kernel, as well as the corresponding density response function, is studied in the limit of large repulsive interactions between the electrons and we give analytical results for these quantities as an asymptotic expansion in powers of the square root of the interaction strength. We find that in the strong interaction limit the three leading terms in the expansion of the kernel act instantaneously while memory terms only appear in the next orders. We further derive an alternative expansion for the kernel in the strong interaction limit on the basis of the theory developed previously [Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 18, 21092 (2016)] using the formalism of strictly correlated electrons in the adiabatic approximation. We find that the first two leading terms in this series, corresponding to the strictly correlated limit and its zero-point vibration correction, coincide with the two leading terms of the exact expansion. We finally analyze the spatial nonlocality of these terms and show when the adiabatic approximation breaks down. The ability to reproduce the exact kernel in the strong interaction limit indicates that the adiabatic strictly correlated electron formalism is useful for studying the density response and excitation properties of other systems with strong electronic interactions.