In parallel with standard density-functional theory, we study the energy of the ground state of a finite many-body system as a functional of the one-particle density matrix. We show that the formulation of a variational principle that is valid beyond the Hartree-Fock limit requires that two-body correlations be included not only in the ground-state energy but also in the constraints. As an illustration, we apply a linear-response argument to derive formulas for first-order corrections to the Hartree-Fock density matrix. Further analysis suggests an approach in terms of the density matrix of an independent-particle system, which can be introduced by the application of an alternative variational principle. This approach is reminiscent of Kohn-Sham theory, but the effective external potential is not required to be local. This variational method can be implemented in a systematic fashion by means of the linked-cluster expansion. In an appendix we study a variant of the Hohenberg-Kohn theorem for nonlocal potentials.
Variation principles for obtaining lower bounds by means of density matrices are applied to a number of many-body problems. This is done by means of restrictions derived from the study of exacly solvable models. Two classes of problems are considered: (a) obtaining a lower bound to the ground-state energy of a system of particles, and (b) obtaining a lower bound to the Helmholtz free energy. For the first case an exact lower bound is obtained for the ground-state energy of the particle-conserving Bogoliubov Hamiltonian. Of particular significance in the nonzero temperature case is a rigorous lower bound to the free energy of the Ising model with small external field at low temperatures.
A density-matrix formulation of the ab initio methods of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics is presented. The variational equations for the standard calculational techniques of molecular quantum mechanics are derived from a single expression for the total energy of an N-particle system. A generalization of the Hohenberg-Kohn theorem is proved, showing that the ground-state energy of a many-body Hamiltonian is a functional of the single-particle density matrix and hence of the first-order reduced-density function (the diagonal of which is the particle density of the standard theorem). The theorem is used to develop a new method to calculate the total energy and single-particle properties of the many-body problem.
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
v-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).
Using an approach based on many body perturbation theory, the correlation energy $\cEco$ is expressed as an explicit functional of
ρ1,
v, and
vs, where
ρ1 is the one-particle density matrix from the noninteracting, or reference, determinantal-state;
v is the external potential from the interacting, or target, state;
vs is the (kernel of the) external potential from the noninteracting determinantal-state. In other words we have $\cEco[ρ_1,v,v_s]$. Anther possibility is the following explicit functional: $\cEco[ρ_1,v_{\text{co}},v_s]$, where
vco is the (kernel of the) correlation potential from the noninteracting Hamiltonian. The proposed method can, in principle, be used to compute $\cEco$ in a very accurate and efficient manner, since, like the Kohn--Sham approach, there are no virtual orbitals to consider. However, in contrast to the Kohn--Sham approach, $\cEco$ is a known, explicit functional that can be approximated in a systematic manner. For simplicity, we only consider noninteracting closed-shell states and target states that are nondegenerate, singlet ground-states; so, in that case,
ρ1 denotes the spin-less one-particle density matrix from the determinantal reference state.
We develop a systematic approach to construct energy functionals of the one-particle reduced density matrix (1RDM) for equilibrium systems at finite temperature. The starting point of our formulation is the grand potential Ω [ G ] regarded as variational functional of the Green’s function G based on diagrammatic many-body perturbation theory and for which we consider either the Klein or Luttinger–Ward form. By restricting the input Green’s function to be one-to-one related to a set on one-particle reduced density matrices (1RDM) this functional becomes a functional of the 1RDM. To establish the one-to-one mapping we use that, at any finite temperature and for a given 1RDM γ in a finite basis, there exists a non-interacting system with a spatially non-local potential v [ γ ] which reproduces the given 1RDM. The corresponding set of non-interacting Green’s functions defines the variational domain of the functional Ω . In the zero temperature limit we obtain an energy functional E [ γ ] which by minimisation yields an approximate ground state 1RDM and energy. As an application of the formalism we use the Klein and Luttinger–Ward functionals in the GW-approximation to compute the binding curve of a model hydrogen molecule using an extended Hubbard Hamiltonian. We compare further to the case in which we evaluate the functionals on a Hartree–Fock and a Kohn–Sham Green’s function. We find that the Luttinger–Ward version of the functionals performs the best and is able to reproduce energies close to the GW energy which corresponds to the stationary point.