In the present work, we employ exact diagonalization for model systems on a real-space lattice to explicitly construct the exact density-to-potential and graphically illustrate the complete exact density-to-wavefunction map that underly the Hohenberg–Kohn theorem in density functional theory. Having the explicit wavefunction-to-density map at hand, we are able to construct arbitrary observables as functionals of the ground-state density. We analyze the density-to-potential map as the distance between the fragments of a system increases and the correlation in the system grows. We observe a feature that gradually develops in the density-to-potential map as well as in the density-to-wavefunction map. This feature is inherited by arbitrary expectation values as functional of the ground-state density. We explicitly show the excited-state energies, the excited-state densities, and the correlation entropy as functionals of the ground-state density. All of them show this exact feature that sharpens as the coupling of the fragments decreases and the correlation grows. We denominate this feature as intra-system steepening and discuss how it relates to the well-known inter-system derivative discontinuity. The inter-system derivative discontinuity is an exact concept for coupled subsystems with degenerate ground state. However, the coupling between subsystems as in charge transfer processes can lift the degeneracy. An important conclusion is that for such systems with a near-degenerate ground state, the corresponding cut along the particle number N of the exact density functionals is differentiable with a well-defined gradient near integer particle number.
In the present work, we employ exact diagonalization for model systems on a real-space lattice to explicitly construct the exact density-to-potential and graphically illustrate the complete exact density-to-wavefunction map that underly the Hohenberg–Kohn theorem in density functional theory. Having the explicit wavefunction-to-density map at hand, we are able to construct arbitrary observables as functionals of the ground-state density. We analyze the density-to-potential map as the distance between the fragments of a system increases and the correlation in the system grows. We observe a feature that gradually develops in the density-to-potential map as well as in the density-to-wavefunction map. This feature is inherited by arbitrary expectation values as functional of the ground-state density. We explicitly show the excited-state energies, the excited-state densities, and the correlation entropy as functionals of the ground-state density. All of them show this exact feature that sharpens as the coupling of the fragments decreases and the correlation grows. We denominate this feature as intra-system steepening and discuss how it relates to the well-known inter-system derivative discontinuity. The inter-system derivative discontinuity is an exact concept for coupled subsystems with degenerate ground state. However, the coupling between subsystems as in charge transfer processes can lift the degeneracy. An important conclusion is that for such systems with a near-degenerate ground state, the corresponding cut along the particle number N of the exact density functionals is differentiable with a well-defined gradient near integer particle number.
Providing sufficient accuracy at low-computational cost, not surprisingly, density-functional theory ( DFT ) is a standard tool in theoretical material science. Similarly, quantum-electrodynamical density-functional theory ( QEDFT ) provides a promising route to describe experiments at the interface of quantum optics and quantum chemistry. Formally, in the Kohn-Sham ( KS ) formulation of DFT and QEDFT the exact many-particle Schrödinger equation is replaced by a set of coupled non-linear one-particle differential equations. The electron-electron, the electron-ion and the electron-photon interactions of the interacting system are mimicked by their corresponding effective KS potential with an, in principle unknown exchange-correlation ( xc ) term. In practice, DFT and QEDFT require approximations for this xc potential. The quality of which fully determines how much the DFT and QEDFT observables deviate from the exact ones. Understanding the shortcomings and improving the quality of approximate functionals makes the study of the exact functional of model systems indispensable. Here, we employ exact diagonalization for the Hamiltonian of different types of real-space lattice models in one spatial dimension to access the ground-state wave function, and thus to explicitly construct the exact functionals of DFT and QEDFT . To study the functional behavior of purely electronic systems, we consider two singlet-state electrons moving in an external potential with two connected atomic wells of variable depth and distance. To study coupled electron-photon systems, we consider the Rabi Hamiltonian with variable electron-photon coupling strength. By varying the model parameters, we systematically construct the functionals for systems from weak to strong coupling between the building blocks of the global system. Using the concept of the effective density-to- potential map, we discuss the intrasystem steepening which is an exact condition on the xc functional that captures the static correlation present in the system and carve out how it relates to the well-known intersystem derivative discontinuity. We further construct arbitrary observables as functionals of the internal variables which are directly affected by such features of the effective density-to-potential map. By constructing the reduced dipole map in the four-particle case of coupled electron-photon system, we show that the density-to-potential map helps to identify and understand recently discovered physical effects in the field of strongly coupled electron-photon systems. This work provides a contribution to the development of approximate function- als required in practical density-functional calculations of arbitrary experimentally accessible observables. Both the intrasystem steepening and the intersystem derivative discontinuity play a crucial role for systems with highly-localized electrons. Including both features in approximate functionals will improve the accu- racy of DFT evaluation of observables for such systems. Those results provide novel insight into the properties of the exact xc potentials in QEDFT . This work opens a new route to construct new functionals using coarse-grained or embed- ding approaches within the general and exact frameworks of DFT and QEDFT.
Based on the work of Görling and that of Levy and Nagy, a density-functional formalism for many fermionic excited states is explored through a careful and rigorous analysis of the excited-state density to external potential mapping. It is shown that knowledge of the ground-state density is a must to fix the mapping from an excited-state density to an external potential. This is the excited-state counterpart of the Hohenberg–Kohn theorem, where instead of the ground-state density the density of the excited state gives the true many-body wavefunctions of the system. Further, the excited-state Kohn–Sham system is defined by comparing its non-interacting kinetic energy with the true kinetic energy. The theory is demonstrated by studying a large number of atomic systems.
We demonstrate that, for a fermionic lattice system, the ground-state particle density uniquely determines the external potential except for the sites corresponding to nodes of the wave function, and the limiting case where the Pauli exclusion principle completely determines the occupation of all sites. Our fundamental finding completes, for this general class of systems, the one-to-one correspondence between ground states, their densities, and the external potential at the base of the Hohenberg-Kohn theorem. Moreover we demonstrate that the mapping from wave function to potential is unique not just for the ground state, but also for excited states. To illustrate our findings, we develop a practical inversion scheme to determine the external potential from a given density. Our results hold for a general class of lattice models, which includes the Hubbard model.
For certain correlated electron–photon systems we construct the exact density-to-potential maps, which are the basic ingredients of a density-functional reformulation of coupled matter-photon problems. We do so for numerically exactly solvable models consisting of up to four fermionic sites coupled to a single photon mode. We show that the recently introduced concept of the intra-system steepening (Dimitrov et al 2016 New J. Phys. 18 083004) can be generalized to coupled fermion-boson systems and that the intra-system steepening indicates strong exchange-correlation effects due to the coupling between electrons and photons. The reliability of the mean-field approximation to the electron–photon interaction is investigated and its failure in the strong coupling regime analyzed. We highlight how the intra-system steepening of the exact density-to-potential maps becomes apparent also in observables such as the photon number or the polarizability of the electronic subsystem. We finally show that a change in functional variables can make these observables behave more smoothly and exemplify that the density-to-potential maps can give us physical insights into the behavior of coupled electron–photon systems by identifying a very large polarizability due to ultra-strong electron–photon coupling.
The Hohenberg-Kohn (HK) theorem is one of the most fundamental theorems of quantum mechanics, and constitutes the basis for the very successful density-functional approach to inhomogeneous interacting many-particle systems. Here we show that in formulations of density-functional theory (DFT) that employ more than one density variable, applied to systems with a degenerate ground state, there is a subtle loophole in the HK theorem, as all mappings between densities, wave functions, and potentials can break down. Two weaker theorems which we prove here, the joint-degeneracy theorem and the internal-energy theorem, restore the internal, total, and exchange-correlation energy functionals to the extent needed in applications of DFT to atoms, molecules, and solids. The joint-degeneracy theorem constrains the nature of possible degeneracies in general many-body systems.
We formulate a set of equations that facilitate an exact numerical solution of the Kohn-Sham potential for a finite Hubbard chain with nearest neighbour hopping and arbitrary site potentials. The approach relies on a mapping of the non-interacting Kohn-Sham ground state wave function onto the exact interacting system wavefunction and two interconnected self-consistent cycles. The self-consistent cycles are performed within the framework of the Kohn-Sham non-interacting system without any direct reference to the interacting system. The first self-consistent cycle updates the mapping of the non-interacting wavefunction onto the interacting wavefunction based on a trial input density, while the second self-consistent cycle updates the Kohn-Sham potential to yield the trial density. At the solution point, the exact density, the exact Kohn-Sham potential, the density functional correlation energy and the exact interacting system ground state energy are available.