According to the Hohenberg-Kohn theorem of density-functional theory (DFT), all observable quantities of systems of interacting electrons can be expressed as functionals of the ground-state density. This includes, in principle, the spin polarization (magnetization) of open-shell systems; the explicit form of the magnetization as a functional of the total density is however unknown. In practice, open-shell systems are always treated with spin-DFT, where the basic variables are the spin densities. Here the relation between DFT and spin-DFT for open-shell systems is illustrated and the exact magnetization density functional is obtained for the half-filled Hubbard trimer. Errors arising from spin-restricted and -unrestricted exact-exchange Kohn-Sham calculations are analyzed and partially resolved via the exact magnetization functional.
According to the Hohenberg-Kohn theorem of density-functional theory (DFT), all observable quantities of systems of interacting electrons can be expressed as functionals of the ground-state density. This includes, in principle, the spin polarization (magnetization) of open-shell systems; the explicit form of the magnetization as a functional of the total density is however unknown. In practice, open-shell systems are always treated with spin-DFT, where the basic variables are the spin densities. Here the relation between DFT and spin-DFT for open-shell systems is illustrated and the exact magnetization density functional is obtained for the half-filled Hubbard trimer. Errors arising from spin-restricted and -unrestricted exact-exchange Kohn-Sham calculations are analyzed and partially resolved via the exact magnetization functional.
Building on our recent study [Giarrusso and Loos, J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 14, 8780 (2023)], we explore the generalization of the ground-state Kohn-Sham (KS) formalism of density-functional theory (DFT) to the (singlet) excited states of the asymmetric Hubbard dimer at half-filling. While we found that the KS-DFT framework can be straightforwardly generalized to the highest-lying doubly excited state, the treatment of the first excited state presents significant challenges. In particular, using a density-fixed adiabatic connection, we show that the density of the first excited state lacks non-interacting v-representability. However, by employing an analytic continuation of the adiabatic path, we demonstrate that the density of the first excited state can be generated by a complex-valued external potential in the non-interacting case. More practically, by performing state-specific KS calculations with exact and approximate correlation functionals-each state possessing a distinct correlation functional-we observe that spurious stationary solutions of the KS equations may arise due to the approximate nature of the functional.
A new approach for the calculation of ground states of many-electron systems is proposed via an integral formulation of the Hohenberg-Kohn-Sham density-functional theory. Only equations for the total electron density are involved; orbitals are not employed. Exchange and correlation effects are incorporated. In place of the set of single-electron equations, the total electron density is explicitly expressed in terms of the Kohn-Sham effective local potential through multidimensional integrations. The development is based on the first-order density matrix as obtained from the one-body Green's function in polygonal and Fourier path-integral representations. This might open up the possibility of ab initio calculations for molecules with very many electrons. It also provides explicit solutions to two long-standing problems: electron kinetic energy and momentum density as functionals of the total electron density. The formulation can also be used in calculations for general fermions.
An extension of density-functional theory, designed to treat spin-density waves and antiferromagnetic systems, is presented. The nonlocal nature of the antiferromagnetic correlations and possible noncollinearity in spin space are incorporated via an additional fundamental variable, the staggered density, which supplements the spin densities of conventional density-functional theory. Inclusion of this variable is justified by both physical and methodological considerations. We prove the corresponding Hohenberg-Kohn theorem, derive the pertinent Kohn-Sham equations, and present several approximate functionals depending explicitly on the staggered density. As a first test the formalism is applied to two simple model systems, a one-dimensional electron gas with a short-range interaction, and the three-dimensional electron gas with Coulomb interactions. These calculations serve to test the developed formalism, but also already allow us to draw a number of conclusions regarding the stability and nature of possible spin-density wave states in homogeneous electron systems.
The physics of interacting many-body systems is a very complex and challenging subject. Therefore one in general needs to use simplified models and approximate methods for studying these systems theoretically. In this work we study the exchange-correlation (xc) potential for the Hubbard-Holstein (HH) model for the application of Density Functional Theory (DFT) to the same. The Hohenberg-Kohn theorem and the two sets of Kohn-Sham equations are derived for the HH-model extending a procedure outlined in previous work. The xc-potentials for the fermions and bosons respectively are then derived analytically as functions of the density n and phononic displacement x for a single HH-site in contact with a heat bath, generalizing the procedure for the pure Hubbard model. The potential for the HH-site is found to have a smaller gap at half filling than for the Hubbard model, due to a rescaling of the effective electron-electron interaction. It also has an additional term linear in (n−1). The xc-potentials are used to study two simple systems, an Andersson impurity dimer and a four-site chain of HH-sites. The results are compared to those of an exact solution and to the Hartree-Fock (HF) solution. For the dimer the DFT-method performs consistently better than the HF-method, while the results for the chain are more ambiguous. However, the central result of this thesis is to produce xc-potentials for an infinitely coordinated Bethe lattice, using Dynamical Mean Field Theory (DMFT). The potentials for a small but representative set of interaction parameters are presented and compared to the analytical potential. The potentials are similar in that they do not exhibit much structure, and they behave very similarly far from half filling. Close to half filling they show more differences, as the analytic potential is always discontinuous around half filling while the potential attained via DMFT is only discontinuous for large electron-electron interactions.
Energy gaps are crucial aspects of the electronic structure of finite and extended systems. Whereas much is known about how to define and calculate charge gaps in density-functional theory (DFT), and about the relation between these gaps and derivative discontinuities of the exchange-correlation functional, much less is known about spin gaps. In this paper we give density-functional definitions of spin-conserving gaps, spin-flip gaps and the spin stiffness in terms of many-body energies and in terms of single-particle (Kohn-Sham) energies. Our definitions are as analogous as possible to those commonly made in the charge case, but important differences between spin and charge gaps emerge already on the single-particle level because unlike the fundamental charge gap spin gaps involve excited-state energies. Kohn-Sham and many-body spin gaps are predicted to differ, and the difference is related to derivative discontinuities that are similar to, but distinct from, those usually considered in the case of charge gaps. Both ensemble DFT and time-dependent DFT (TDDFT) can be used to calculate these spin discontinuities from a suitable functional. We illustrate our findings by evaluating our definitions for the Lithium atom, for which we calculate spin gaps and spin discontinuities by making use of near-exact Kohn-Sham eigenvalues and, independently, from the single-pole approximation to TDDFT. The many-body corrections to the Kohn-Sham spin gaps are found to be negative, i.e., single-particle calculations tend to overestimate spin gaps while they underestimate charge gaps.
The solution of complex many-body lattice models can often be found by defining an energy functional of the relevant density of the problem. For instance, in the case of the Hubbard model the spin-resolved site occupation is enough to describe the system's total energy. Similarly to standard density functional theory, however, the exact functional is unknown, and suitable approximations need to be formulated. By using a deep-learning neural network trained on exact-diagonalization results, we demonstrate that one can construct an exact functional for the Hubbard model. In particular, we show that the neural network returns a ground-state energy numerically indistinguishable from that obtained by exact diagonalization and, most importantly, that the functional satisfies the two Hohenberg-Kohn theorems: for a given ground-state density it yields the external potential, and it is fully variational in the site occupation.