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Modern Physics Letters B

DENSITY FUNCTIONALS AND SMALL INTERPARTICLE SEPARATIONS IN ELECTRONIC SYSTEMS

Kieron Burke, John P. Perdew

Published Jun 20, 1995• 6 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We review some recent results concerning the probability that two electrons will be found close together in any interacting electronic system, and why this probability is usually well approximated by local (LSD) and semilocal spin density functional theories. The success of these approximations for the energy in "normal" systems is explained by the usual sum rule arguments on the system- and spherically-averaged exchange-correlation hole density <n xc (u)>, coupled with the nearly correct, but not exact, behavior of these approximations as the interelectronic separation u → 0. We argue that the accuracy of the LSD on-top hole density in "normal" systems is due to its accuracy in the noninteracting, weakly-interacting, and strongly-interacting limits.

DOI
10.1142/s0217984995000784

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We review some recent results concerning the probability that two electrons will be found close together in any interacting electronic system, and why this probability is usually well approximated by local (LSD) and semilocal spin density functional theories. The success of these approximations for the energy in "normal" systems is explained by the usual sum rule arguments on the system- and spherically-averaged exchange-correlation hole density <n xc (u)>, coupled with the nearly correct, but not exact, behavior of these approximations as the interelectronic separation u → 0. We argue that the accuracy of the LSD on-top hole density in "normal" systems is due to its accuracy in the noninteracting, weakly-interacting, and strongly-interacting limits.
Density functional theory provides the most widespread framework for the realistic description of the electronic structure of solids, but the description of strongly correlated systems has remained so far elusive. We consider a particular limit of electrons and ions in which a one-band description becomes exact all the way from the weakly correlated metallic regime to the strongly correlated Mott-Hubbard regime. We provide a necessary condition a density functional should fulfill to describe Mott-Hubbard behavior in this one-band limit and show that it is not satisfied by standard and widely used local, semilocal, and hybrid functionals. We illustrate the condition in the case of few-atom systems and provide an analytic approximation to the exact exchange-correlation potential based on a variational wave function which shows explicitly the correct behavior, combining in a neat way lattice and continuum methods.
Density functional theory (DFT) is the de facto method for the electronic structure of weakly correlated systems. But for strongly correlated materials, common density functional approximations break down. Here, we derive a many-electron expansion (MEE) in DFT that accounts for successive one-, two-, three-, ... particle interactions within the system. To compute the correction terms, the density is first decomposed into a sum of localized, nodeless one-electron densities (${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{i}$). These one-electron densities are used to construct relevant two- (${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{i}+{\ensuremath{\rho}}_{j}$), three- (${\ensuremath{\rho}}_{i}+{\ensuremath{\rho}}_{j}+{\ensuremath{\rho}}_{k}$), ... electron densities. Numerically exact results for these few-particle densities can then be used to correct an approximate density functional via any of several many-body expansions. We show that the resulting hierarchy gives accurate results for several important model systems: the Hubbard and Peierls-Hubbard models in 1D and the pure Hubbard model in 2D. We further show that the method is numerically convergent for strongly correlated systems: applying successively higher order corrections leads to systematic improvement of the results. MEE thus provides a hierarchy of density functional approximations that applies to both weakly and strongly correlated systems.
Accurate descriptions of the electronic properties of molecules, solids and other materials are crucial in the development of many modern technologies, and are therefore the subject of much scientific research. In tandem with experimental research, computational simulations play a huge role. Density functional theory (DFT) is the most popular method for performing ground-state electronic structure calculations due to its accuracy in many situations along with its computational efficiency. Its time-dependent extension (TDDFT) allows the modelling of the dynamics of systems of interacting electrons. (TD)DFT is an exact theory in principle, but requires approximations in practice, specifically to the many-body effects of electron exchange and correlation (xc), which are described by some unknown universal functional. Despite much success, it often proves inadequate in many scenarios of increasing interest. Therefore, we aim to contribute to the development of improved approximate density functionals. \n \nIn this thesis, we take the approach of studying small model systems for which we can compute the exact functionals. These systems are designed to exhibit the key features present in realistic quantum systems, such as atoms and molecules, which the exact universal (TD)DFT functional is capable of describing, but are often ill-described by the commonly used approximations. By analysing the nature of these exact functionals, we gain valuable insight into their fundamental properties, together with identifying where the current approximations are lacking, thereby allowing us to suggest how these approximations may be improved.
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.
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.
In this second work in a series of papers the coupled-cluster or exp(S)\mathrm{exp}(S)exp(S) formalism is applied to the problem of ground-state correlations in the one-component Fermi plasma. The main approximation employed is the so-called SUB2 approximation for the two-body subsystem correlation operator S2{S}_{2}S2​ which provides a measure of the two-particle---two-hole component in the true ground-state wave function, and in which the coupling to larger subsystems is neglected. The SUB2 equations for Fermi systems are brought into tractable form by a "state-averaging" procedure which we develop by analogy with the comparable Bose equations, and which is shown by comparison with earlier exact results to be accurate in the metallic density regime at about the 1% level. Our final results for metallic densities include the completely integrated and self-consistent effects of the terms which by themselves generate (i) the random-phase approximation (RPA) and its associated exact long-range screening effects, (ii) the extra random-phase approximation exchange terms necessary to keep the RPA explicitly antisymmetric, (iii) the self-consistent particle-particle ladders (LAD) that describe two-particle scattering within the many-body medium and which describe the exact short-range behavior, (iv) a class of particle-hole ladder terms, and (v) the self-consistent hole-potential terms. Particular attention is paid to the important effects caused by the interference at intermediate separations of the long-range RPA and the short-range LAD effects. By comparison with recent and essentially exact stochastic simulations of the many-body Schr\"odinger equation, our results are seen to be accurate to about 1% for metallic densities, and hence to provide what is probably the currently best microscopic description available for this system. We show also that even in the low-density limit the SUB2 approximation provides a good "translationally-invariant-solid" description of both charged Fermi and Bose systems in this exact Wigner crystal regime.