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The Journal of Physical Chemistry

Reference-State Density Functional Theory

ROBERT K. NESBET

Published Jan 1, 1996• 30 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Many theoretical methods for N -electron systems use a reference state whose electronic density in general differs from that of the associated eigenstate. In contrast, the density functional theory of Kohn and Sham postulates a model reference system for which these two densities are identical. An alternative postulate, requiring the reference state to have maximum projection on the true wave function (the Brueckner−Brenig construction), is shown here to provide a theory in which the ground-state energy is a functional of the reference-state density. This revised formalism makes it possible to identify elements of the theory with specific formulas and concepts of formal many-body theory. In particular, the one-electron wave functions are in one-to-one correspondence with physical quasiparticles of a generalized Fermi-liquid theory, and the one-electron energies are Landau quasiparticle energies.

DOI
10.1021/jp952714f

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Many theoretical methods for N -electron systems use a reference state whose electronic density in general differs from that of the associated eigenstate. In contrast, the density functional theory of Kohn and Sham postulates a model reference system for which these two densities are identical. An alternative postulate, requiring the reference state to have maximum projection on the true wave function (the Brueckner−Brenig construction), is shown here to provide a theory in which the ground-state energy is a functional of the reference-state density. This revised formalism makes it possible to identify elements of the theory with specific formulas and concepts of formal many-body theory. In particular, the one-electron wave functions are in one-to-one correspondence with physical quasiparticles of a generalized Fermi-liquid theory, and the one-electron energies are Landau quasiparticle energies.
The formalism of Kohn and Sham uses a specific (model) hamiltonian which highly simplifies the many-electron problem to that of noninteracting fermions. The theorem of Hohenberg and Kohn tells us that, for a given ground state density, this hamiltonian is unique. In principle, this density can be chosen as that of the real, interacting system. To obtain the energy, or other properties of the real system, approximations are needed. Working with non interacting fermions is an important simplification, but it may be easier to produce approximations with different choices of the model hamiltonian. The feature that the exact density is (ideally) reproduced can be kept in the newly defined fictitious systems. Using model hamiltonians having the same form as the physical one, that is, being built of one- and two-body operators, allows to approach the physical hamiltonian arbitrarily close, and thus a systematic reduction of the approximations.
We propose a framework to construct the ground-state energy and density matrix of an NNN-electron system by solving a self-consistent set of single-particle equations. The method can be viewed as a nontrivial extension of the Kohn-Sham scheme (which is embedded as a special case). It is based on separating the Green's function into a quasiparticle part and a background part, and expressing only the background part as a functional of the density matrix. The calculated single-particle energies and wave functions have a clear physical interpretation as quasiparticle energies and orbitals.
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 density functional theory originally developed by Hohenberg, Kohn, and Sham provides a rigorous conceptual framework for dealing with inhomogeneous interacting Fermi systems. We extend this approach to deal with inhomogeneous interacting Bose-condensed systems, limiting this presentation to setting up the formalism to deal with ground-state (T = 0) properties. The key new feature is that one must deal with energy functionals of both the local density n(r) and the local complex macroscopic wave function Φ(r) associated with the Bose broken-symmetry (the local condensate density is [Formula: see text]. Implementing the Kohn–Sham scheme, we reduce the problem to a gas of weakly interacting Bosons moving in self-consistent diagonal and off-diagonal one-body potentials. Our formalism should provide the basis for studies of the surface properties of liquid 4He as well as the properties of Bose-condensed atomic gases trapped in external potentials.
A density-matrix formalism is developed based on the one-particle density-matrix of a single-determinantal reference state. Unlike traditional density-functional-theory approaches, the vvv-representable problem does not appear in the proposed method, nor the need to introduce functionals defined by a constrained search. The correlation-energy functionals are nonuniversal, in the sense that they depend on the external potential. Nevertheless, model systems can still be used to derive universal energy functionals. Variational and nonvariational energy functionals are introduced that yield the target-state energy when the reference state---or its corresponding one-particle density matrix---is constructed from Brueckner orbitals. Nonvariational energy functionals yield generalized Hartree-Fock equations involving a nonlocal correlation potential and the Hartree-Fock exchange operator; these equations are obtained by imposing the Brillouin-Brueckner condition. The same equations---for the most part---are obtained from variational energy functionals using functional minimization, yielding the (kernel of the) correlation potential as the functional derivative of correlation-energy functionals. Approximations for the correlation-energy functions are introduced, including a one-particle-density-matrix variant of the local-density approximation, a variant of the Colle-Salvetti functional, and a linear combination of the two that is a variant of the correlation-energy functional within the hybrid, three-parameter, Becke-Lee-Yang-Parr density functional (B3LYP).
We present a rigorous formulation of generalized Kohn-Sham density-functional theory. This provides a straightforward Kohn-Sham description of many-body systems based not only on particle-density but also on any other observable. We illustrate the formalism for the case of a particle-density based description of a nonrelativistic many-electron system. We obtain a simple diagrammatic expansion of the exchange-correlation functional in terms of Kohn-Sham single-particle orbitals and energies; develop systematic Kohn-Sham formulation for one-electron propagators and many-body excitation energies. This work is ideally suited for practical applications and provides a rigorous basis for a systematic development of the existing body of first-principles calculations in a controllable fashion.