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arXiv:1710.00237 · Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation

Fermionic Statistics in the Strongly Correlated Limit of Density Functional Theory

Juri Grossi, Derk Pieter Kooi, Klaas J. H. Giesbertz, Michael Seidl, Aron J. Cohen, Paula Mori‐Sánchez, Paola Gori‐Giorgi

Published Nov 7, 2017• 0 citations
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Abstract

Abstract Exact pieces of information on the adiabatic connection integrand, Wλ[ρ], which allows evaluation of the exchange-correlation energy of Kohn–Sham density functional theory, can be extracted from the leading terms in the strong coupling limit (λ → ∞, where λ is the strength of the electron–electron interaction). In this work, we first compare the theoretical prediction for the two leading terms in the strong coupling limit with data obtained via numerical implementation of the exact Levy functional in the simple case of two electrons confined in one dimension, confirming the asymptotic exactness of these two terms. We then carry out a first study on the incorporation of the Fermionic statistics at large coupling λ, both numerical and theoretical, confirming that spin effects enter at orders ∼e–√λ.

DOI
10.1021/acs.jctc.7b00998

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Abstract Exact pieces of information on the adiabatic connection integrand, Wλ[ρ], which allows evaluation of the exchange-correlation energy of Kohn–Sham density functional theory, can be extracted from the leading terms in the strong coupling limit (λ → ∞, where λ is the strength of the electron–electron interaction). In this work, we first compare the theoretical prediction for the two leading terms in the strong coupling limit with data obtained via numerical implementation of the exact Levy functional in the simple case of two electrons confined in one dimension, confirming the asymptotic exactness of these two terms. We then carry out a first study on the incorporation of the Fermionic statistics at large coupling λ, both numerical and theoretical, confirming that spin effects enter at orders ∼e–√λ.
Exact pieces of information on the adiabatic connection integrand, λ, which allows evaluation of the exchange-correlation energy of Kohn-Sham density functional theory, can be extracted from the leading terms in the strong coupling limit (λ → ∞, where λ is the strength of the electron-electron interaction). In this work, we first compare the theoretical prediction for the two leading terms in the strong coupling limit with data obtained via numerical implementation of the exact Levy functional in the simple case of two electrons confined in one dimension, confirming the asymptotic exactness of these two terms. We then carry out a first study on the incorporation of the Fermionic statistics at large coupling λ, both numerical and theoretical, confirming that spin effects enter at orders ~e-λ
We use the exact strong-interaction limit of the Hohenberg-Kohn energy density functional to approximate the exchange-correlation energy of the restricted Kohn-Sham scheme. Our approximation corresponds to a highly nonlocal density functional whose functional derivative can be easily constructed, thus transforming exactly, in a physically transparent way, an important part of the electron-electron interaction into an effective local one-body potential. We test our approach on quasi-one-dimensional systems, showing that it captures essential features of strong correlation that restricted Kohn-Sham calculations using the currently available approximations cannot describe.
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.
We present analytic expressions for the exact density functional and Kohn-Sham Hamiltonian of simple tight-binding models of correlated electrons. These are the single- and double-site versions of the Anderson, Hubbard, and spinless fermion models. The exact exchange and correlation potentials keep the full nonlocal dependence on electron occupations. The analytic expressions allow us to compare the Kohn-Sham eigenstates of exact density functional theory with the many-body quasiparticle states of these correlated-electron systems. The exact Kohn-Sham spectrum describes correctly many of the nontrivial features of the many-body quasiparticle spectrum such as, for example, the precursors of the Kondo peak. However, we find that some pieces of the quasiparticle spectrum are missing because the many-body phase space for electron and hole excitations is richer.
The exact interaction energy of a many-electron system is determined by the electron pair density, which is not well-approximated in standard Kohn--Sham density functional models. Here we study the (complicated but well-defined) exact universal map from density to pair density. We survey how many common functionals, including the most basic version of the local density approximation (Dirac exchange with no correlation contribution), arise from particular approximations of this map. We develop an algorithm to compute the map numerically and apply it to one-parameter families {αρ(αx)}α>0\{\alpha\rho(\alpha x)\}_{\alpha>0}{αρ(αx)}α>0​ of one-dimensional homogeneous and inhomogeneous single-particle densities. We observe that the pair density develops remarkable multiscale patterns which strongly depend on both the particle number and the “width” α−1\alpha^{-1}α−1 of the single-particle density. The simulation results are confirmed by rigorous asymptotic results in the limiting regimes α≫\alpha\ggα≫ and α≪1\alpha\ll1α≪1. For one-dimensional homogeneous systems, we show that the whole spectrum of patterns is reproduced surprisingly well by a simple asymptotics-based ansatz which slowly smoothens out the “strictly correlated” α=0\alpha=0α=0 pair density while slowly turning on the α=∞\alpha=\inftyα=∞ “exchange” terms as α\alphaα increases. Our findings lend theoretical support to the celebrated semi-empirical idea [A. D. Becke, J. Chem. Phys., 98 (1993), pp. 5648--5652] to mix in a fractional amount of exchange, albeit not to assuming the mixing to be additive and taking the fraction to be a system-independent constant.
In the widely-used Kohn-Sham density functional theory for the manyelectron ground state, only the density functional for the exchange-correlation energy is approximated. While the exact density functional minimizes at the exact ground-state energy for any system, widely used approximations can at best describe normally-correlated ground states. A “proper” approximation for a given problem is defined as one that well describes relevant normally-correlated states. Strong correlation, present in many quantum materials, can arise due to abnormally high degeneracy of the Kohn-Sham occupied and unoccupied one-electron energies near the Fermi level. In such situations, the approximate functional may lower its energy by spontaneously breaking symmetries that the ground-state density shares with the many-electron Hamiltonian, reducing the degeneracies that lead to strong correlation. Here the Levy constrained search is invoked to argue that the total energy of a “proper” functional with maximal spontaneous symmetry breaking is bounded from below by the exact total energy, and that the bound may be close to the extent that the abnormal degeneracies are removed. This is a consequence of a variational principle, and it may not hold in non-variational but more accurate approaches to normal correlation such as coupled cluster theory. Since the correlation energy of any one-electron state is zero, a widely “proper” approximate functional should be nearly or exactly self-interaction free, and progress toward a proper self-interaction correction is reviewed here. The time-centered physical interpretation of symmetry breaking is also discussed.