Here, we revisit the problem of finding the ground-state energy of an N-fermion fluid under an external field, with molecular structure as the ultimate target. Density-functional methods only have to deal with electron density, but require an empirical functional; reduced density-matrix methods involve a matrix on pair space and do give exact bounds, but require very complex linear programming to achieve their results. The polydensity representation that we introduce has the advantage of dealing only with densities, requires no empirical information, and also gives exact bounds; the major problem is that of accumulating and utilizing conditions on the densities that iteratively improve their realizability in the class of N-fermion systems. We indicate several directions along these lines and make some primitive applications.
We illustrate the importance of restrictions in improving ground state energy lower bounds of a model of correlated electrons on a lattice. A reduced density matrix (RDM) formalism is employed. The restrictions are derived from closely related and exactly solved models. Such conditions raise the estimates without resorting to increasing the size of the physical space, thus improving computational efficiency. Our main motivation for this work is the problematic picture of Hohenberg–Kohn–Sham density functional theory for strongly correlated fermions. We find that using small cluster representations, errors can be reduced by more than 50% depending on the nature of the model and parameter regime studied. We obtain results for one- and two-dimensional lattices at half filling in the thermodynamic limit, although the method could be easily adapted to finite molecular structures as well.
A Tribute to A. John Coleman - The Tame Mathematician.- Reduced Density Matrices: 1929-1989.- Some Aspects on the Development of the Theory of Reduced Density Matrices and the Representability Problem.- Representability Conditions.- On the Diagonal N-Representability Problem.- Fermion N-Representability Conditions Generated by a Decomposition of the 1-Particle Identity Operator onto Mutually Orthogonal Projection Operators.- The Unitarily Invariant Decomposition of Hermitian Operators.- Building Up N-Electron States with Symplectic Symmetry.- Time Dependent Antisymmetrized Geminal Power Theory Using a Coherent State Formulation.- Griffiths Inequalities for Fermion Systems.- Entropy of Reduced Density Matrices.- A Lower Bound to the Ground State Energy of a Boson System With Fermion Source.- Reduced Density Operators, Their Related von Neumann Density Operators, Close Cousins of These, and Their Physical Interpretation.- Theory and Practice of the Spin-Adapted Reduced Hamiltonians (SRH).- Variational Principle with Built-In Pure State N-Representability Conditions. The N-Electron Case.- Wigner Distributions as Representations of the Density Matrix.- Inter-Relationships Between Various Representations of One-Matrices and Related Densities: A Road Map and an Example ..- Current Problems in Density Functional Theory.- The Interface Between Reduced Density Matrices and Density Functional Theory.- The Physics Underlying the Langreth-Mehl Scheme for Non-Uniform Systems.- Understanding Energy Differences in Density Functional Theory.- Density Functional Calculations of Molecular Bond Energies.- Non-Local Effects on Atomic and Molecular Correlation Energies Studied with a Gradient-Corrected Density Functional.- An Evaluation of Local Electron Correlation Corrections and Non-Local Exchange Corrections to the Hartree-Fock-Slater Method from Calculations on Bond Energies and Electronic Spectra of Molecular Systems.- Correlation Energy Functionals of One-Matrices and Hartree-Fock Densities.- Some Remarks on Scaling Relations in Density Functional Theory.- Deduction of Semiempirical MO Methods from Density Functional Theory.- Charge and Spin Densities in Molecular Solids: Local Density Functional Calculations Versus Experiment.- A Functional of the Two-Particle Density Matrix for the Approximate Calculation of the Electronic Correlation Energy.- Extracules, Intracules, Correlation Holes, Potentials, Coefficients and All That.- The Exact Schroedinger Equation for the Electron Density.- Adiabatic Separation, Broken Symmetries and Geometry Optimization.- Asymptotic Results for Density Matrices and Electron Density in Atoms and Nearly Spherical Molecules.- An Algorithm for Calculating Isoelectronic Changes in Energies, Densities, and One-Matrices.- Atoms and Ions in the Limit of Large Nuclear Charge.- Improved Thomas-Fermi Theory for Atoms.- A Bond Energy from Quantum Mechanics.- Measured Electron Densities and Band Structure Calculations.- X-ray Orthonormal Orbital Model for Crystallography.
A fermion ground state energy functional is set up in terms of particle density, relative pair density, and kinetic energy tensor density. It satisfies a minimum principle if constrained by a complete set of compatibility conditions. A partial set, which thereby results in a lower bound energy under minimization, is obtained from the solution of model systems, as well as a small number of exact sum rules. Prototypical application is made to several one-dimensional spinless noninteracting models. The effectiveness of ``atomic'' constraints on model ``molecules'' is observed, as well as the structure of systems with only finitely many bound states.
In pair density-functional theory, the only unknown piece of the energy is the kinetic energy
T as a functional of the pair density
P(x1,x2). Although
T[P] has a simpler structure than the Hohenberg-Kohn functional of conventional density-functional theory, computational requirements are still moderate. In the present work, a particularly convenient model system to represent many-electron pair densities is introduced. This ``boson pair model'' (BPM) approximately treats electron pairs as noninteracting bosons. The resulting explicit model for the kinetic energy
T2[P] is shown to be exact for two-electron systems and a lower bound to
T[P] for more than two electrons. The one- and two-particle density matrices obtained from the BPM yield upper bounds for the corresponding many-electron quantities. This suggests a partitioning
T[P]=T2[P]+Teff[P], where only the remainder ${T}_{\mathrm{eff}}\phantom{\rule{0.1em}{0ex}}[P]\ensuremath{\geqslant}0$ needs to be approximated. If the BPM is constrained to yield the exact ground-state pair density, a two-electron Schr\"odinger equation with an effective local two-particle potential results; the latter is identified as a sum of the bare Coulomb interaction and the functional derivative of
Teff[P]. This self-consistent scheme to minimize the energy with respect to
P is more efficient than previous procedures. Further information on the functional derivative of
Teff[P] is derived from a contracted Schr\"odinger equation. Since
Teff[P] is explicitly known in the two-electron and noninteracting (Hartree-Fock) limits, the present method provides an alternative to density-matrix functional theories, which can be exact in the same limits and are similar in computational cost.