Journal of Physics A Mathematical and General
The determination of the Dirac density matrix of the d-dimensional harmonic oscillator for an arbitrary number of closed shells
I. A. Howard, N. H. March, Luis Miguel Nieto
Abstract
In 1959, March and Young ( Nucl. Phys. 12 237) rewrote the equation of motion for the Dirac density matrix γ( x , x 0 ) in terms of sum and difference variables. Here, γ( , 0 ) for the d -dimensional isotropic harmonic oscillator for an arbitrary number of closed shells is shown to satisfy, using the variables ∣ + 0 ∣/2 and ∣ − 0 ∣/2, a generalized partial differential equation embracing the March–Young equation for d = 1. As applications, we take in turn the cases d = 1, 2, 3 and 4, and obtain both the density matrix γ( , 0 ) and the diagonal density ϱ( r ) = γ( , 0 )∣ 0 = , this diagonal element already being known to satisfy a third-order linear homogeneous differential equation for d = 1 through 3. Some comments are finally made on the d -dimensional kinetic energy density, which is important for first-principles density functional theory in allowing one to bypass one-particle Schrödinger equations (the so-called Slater–Kohn–Sham equations).