Exchange and Correlation in Many-Electron Systems

Stig Lundqvist

JingChun Wang, Su Yu, Haoyang Cheng +2 more

Electronic correlation is a fundamental topic in many-electron systems. To characterize this correlation, one may introduce the concept of exchange-correlation hole. In this work, we first briefly revisit its definition and relation to electron and geminal densities, followed by their intimate relations to copula functions in probability theory and statistics. We then propose a copula-based approach to estimate the exchange-correlation hole from the electron density. It is anticipated that the proposed scheme will become a promising ingredient towards the future development of strongly correlated electronic structure calculations.

Iman Ahmadabadi, I-Te Lu, Leonardo A. Cunha +3 more

We present results of a photon-free exchange-correlation functional within the local density approximation (pxcLDA) for quantum electrodynamics density functional theory (QEDFT) that efficiently describes the electron density of many-electron systems across weak to strong light-matter coupling. Building on previous work [I-Te. Lu et al., Phys. Rev. A 109, 052823 (2024)] that captured electron-photon correlations via an exchange-correlation functional derived from the nonrelativistic Pauli-Fierz Hamiltonian and tested on one-electron systems, we use a simple procedure to compute a renormalization factor describing electron-photon correlations and inhomogeneity in the weak-coupling regime by comparing it with quantum electrodynamics coupled-cluster, and previous QEDFT optimized effective potential methods. Across various atoms and molecules, pxcLDA reproduces cavity-modified densities in close agreement with these references. The renormalization factor approaches unity as the system size or collective coupling increases, reflecting an electron-photon exchange-dominated behavior and improved accuracy for larger systems. This approach now offers a practical route to applying QEDFT functionals based on electron density to realistic electron systems.

S. Fraga, Gulzari L. Malli, L. H. Thomas

F. Aryasetiawan

The one-particle Green function of a many-electron system is traditionally formulated within the self-energy picture. A different formalism was recently proposed, in which the self-energy is replaced by a dynamical exchange-correlation field, which acts on the Green function locally in both space and time. It was found that there exists a fundamental quantity, referred to as the dynamical exchange-correlation hole, which can be interpreted as effective density fluctuations induced in a many-electron system when a hole or an electron is introduced into the system, as in photoemission and inverse photoemission experiments. The dynamical exchange-correlation potential is simply the Coulomb potential of this exchange-correlation hole, which fulfils a sum rule and an exact constraint, identical to those satisfied by the static exchange-correlation hole in density-functional theory. The proposed formalism has been applied to a number of model systems such as the half-filled one-dimensional Hubbard model, the one-dimensional antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model, and the single-impurity Anderson model. The dynamical exchange-correlation hole and field of the homogeneous electron gas have also been studied with the view of constructing a density-functional approximation such as the local-density approximation. The availability of simple but accurate approximations for the exchange-correlation potential would circumvent costly computations of the traditional self-energy. The formalism may also provide new perspectives and insights into the many-body problem.

Jenő Sólyom