Many problems in physical chemistry involve systems that are coupled to an environment, such as a molecule interacting with an adjacent surface, possibly resulting in meta-stable molecular states where electron density is transferred to the surface. Such systems can be described by non-Hermitian quantum mechanics (NHQM), where the Hamiltonian includes dissipative terms. Within NHQM, one can also formulate the Hartree-Fock (HF) and Kohn-Sham (KS) methods and, as in the conventional theory, an effective independent-particle picture is employed. The crucial observation of the present work is that even for systems that are not coupled to an environment, in the HF or KS equation a single electron is coupled to a bath of the remaining electrons which can act as an environment, opening up the possibility for the exchange of current density between the one-electron and the remaining N-1 electron system. The corresponding self-consistent states represent a new uncharted space of solutions to the HF and KS equations. We show that the additional solutions can have a physical interpretation and thus extend the range of problems HF and KS can be applied to. If open-system HF and KS calculations are performed, the new class of solutions is always encountered but this has also not been noted previously.
Many problems in physical chemistry involve systems that are coupled to an environment, such as a molecule interacting with an adjacent surface, possibly resulting in meta-stable molecular states where electron density is transferred to the surface. Such systems can be described by non-Hermitian quantum mechanics (NHQM), where the Hamiltonian includes dissipative terms. Within NHQM, one can also formulate the Hartree-Fock (HF) and Kohn-Sham (KS) methods and, as in the conventional theory, an effective independent-particle picture is employed. The crucial observation of the present work is that even for systems that are not coupled to an environment, in the HF or KS equation a single electron is coupled to a bath of the remaining electrons which can act as an environment, opening up the possibility for the exchange of current density between the one-electron and the remaining N-1 electron system. The corresponding self-consistent states represent a new uncharted space of solutions to the HF and KS equations. We show that the additional solutions can have a physical interpretation and thus extend the range of problems HF and KS can be applied to. If open-system HF and KS calculations are performed, the new class of solutions is always encountered but this has also not been noted previously.
Many problems in physical chemistry involve systems that are coupled to an environment, such as a molecule interacting with a nearby surface. In these cases, electron density may flow between the system and its surroundings, leading to metastable states and other open-system phenomena that cannot be captured by conventional Hermitian quantum mechanics. Non-Hermitian quantum mechanics (NHQM) [1] provides a natural framework for the description of open systems. Hartree-Fock (HF) and Kohn-Sham (KS) methods can be extended to the non-Hermitian domain [2–7]. Here, we show that even for nominally isolated systems, within HF and KS, each electron can be viewed as coupled to the remaining electrons, which serve as an environment. This viewpoint reveals that an electron can leave or rejoin the system, producing self-consistent complex potentials. These unconventional solutions are absent in the conventional closed-system HF and KS approach. We show that these additional solutions can be physically meaningful. Our results highlight the importance of incorporating non-Hermitian perspectives into electronic structure calculations, offering new insights and extending the range of problems HF and KS can be applied to. [1] Moiseyev, N. Non-Hermitian Quantum Mechanics, Cambridge University Press (2011). [2] Zhou, Y., Ernzerhof, M. J. Chem. Phys. 136, 094105 (2012). [3] Ernzerhof, M. J. Chem. Phys. 125, 124104 (2006). [4] Zhou, Y., Ernzerhof, M. J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 3, 1916–1920 (2012). [5] Burton, H. G. A., Thom, A. J. W. J. Chem. Theory Comput. 12, 167–173 (2016). [6] Burton, H. G. A., Gross, M., Thom, A. J. W. J. Chem. Theory Comput. 14, 607–618 (2018). [7] Burton, H. G. A., Thom, A. J. W., Loos, P.-F. J. Chem. Theory Comput. 15, 4374–4385 (2019).
A system of electrons in a local or nonlocal external potential can be described with one-matrix functional theory (1MFT), which is similar to density-functional theory (DFT) but takes the one-particle reduced density matrix (one-matrix) instead of the density as its basic variable. Within 1MFT, Gilbert derived [Phys. Rev. B 12, 2111 (1975)] effective single-particle equations analogous to the Kohn-Sham (KS) equations in DFT. The self-consistent solution of these 1MFT-KS equations reproduces not only the density of the original electron system but also its one-matrix. While in DFT it is usually possible to reproduce the density using KS orbitals with integer (0 or 1) occupancy, in 1MFT reproducing the one-matrix requires in general fractional occupancies. The variational principle implies that the KS eigenvalues of all fractionally occupied orbitals must collapse at self-consistency to a single level. We show that as a consequence of the degeneracy, the iteration of the KS equations is intrinsically divergent. Fortunately, the level-shifting method, commonly introduced in Hartree-Fock calculations, is always able to force convergence. We introduce an alternative derivation of the 1MFT-KS equations that allows control of the eigenvalue collapse by constraining the occupancies. As an explicit example, we apply the 1MFT-KS scheme to calculate the ground state one-matrix of an exactly solvable two-site Hubbard model.
Following a recent work [Gál, Phys. Rev. A64, 062503 (2001)], a simple derivation of the density-functional correction of the Hartree–Fock equations, the Hartree–Fock–Kohn–Sham equations, is presented, completing an integrated view of quantum mechanical theories, in which the Kohn–Sham equations, the Hartree–Fock–Kohn–Sham equations and the ground-state Schrödinger equation formally stem from a common ground: density-functional theory, through its Euler equation for the ground-state density. Along similar lines, the Kohn–Sham formulation of the Hartree–Fock approach is also considered. Further, it is pointed out that the exchange energy of density-functional theory built from the Kohn–Sham orbitals can be given by degree-two homogeneous N-particle density functionals (N = 1, 2, …), forming a sequence of degree-two homogeneous exchange-energy density functionals, the first element of which is minus the classical Coulomb-repulsion energy functional.
Density functional theory is currently the most widely applied method in electronic structure theory. The Kohn-Sham method, based on a fictitious system of non-interacting particles, is the work horse of the theory. The particular form of the Kohn-Sham wavefunction admits only idem-potent one electron density matrices whereas wavefunctions of correlated electrons in post-Hartree-Fock methods invariably have fractional occupation numbers. Here we show that by generalizing the orbital concept, and introducing a suitable dot-product as well as a probability density a non-interacting system can be chosen that can represent the one-electron density matrix of any system, even one with fractional occupation numbers. This fictitious system ensures that the exact electron density is accessible within density functional theory. It can also serve as the basis for reduced density matrix functional theory. Moreover, to aid the analysis of the results the orbitals may be assigned energies from a mean-field Hamiltonian. This produces energy levels that are akin to Hartree-Fock orbital energies such that conventional analyses based on Koopmans theorem are available. Finally, this system is convenient in formalisms that depend on creation and annihilation operators as they are trivially applied to single determinant wavefunctions.
The exact static and time-dependent Kohn-Sham (KS) exchange-correlation potential is extremely challenging to approximate as it is a local multiplicative potential that depends on the electron density everywhere in the system. The KS approach can be generalized by allowing part of the potential to be spatially nonlocal. We take this nonlocal part to be that of unrestricted Hartree-Fock theory. The additional local correlation potential in principle ensures that the single-particle density exactly equals the many-body density. In our case, the local correlation potential is predominantly nearsighted in its dependence on the density and hence an (adiabatic) local-density approximation to this potential yields accurate ground-state properties and real-time densities for one-dimensional test systems.
By introducing a set of auxiliary equations representing a many-body system, we have derived an extension of the Kohn-Sham scheme for the density functional theory. These equations consist of a Kohn-Sham-type equation determining single-particle orbitals and an eigen-value equation for an effective many-body problem. A variational method similar to the Kohn-Sham technique was utilized to derive effective interactions as well as effective potentials without artificial substitution of a Hubbard-type interaction and a mean-field correction in the energy functional. The second equation is described by an effective many-body Hamiltonian with both 2-body interactions and mean-field terms. Rigorous formulation of the extended Kohn-Sham equation is also given in accordance with the Hadjisavvas-Theophilou formulation. Our formulation can be interpreted as a way to define models of the strongly correlated electron systems, e.g. the Hubbard model