Homogeneous Electron Gas

Tom Banks, Bingnan Zhang

James J. Shepherd, Tom M. Henderson, Andreas Gr uneis +1 more

Orion Ciftja

The homogeneous electron gas model has been quite successful to predict the bulk properties of systems of electrons at various densities. In many occasions, a simplified free homogeneous electron gas model represents a powerful first approximation to a real system. Despite our considerable knowledge on the bulk properties of a homogeneous electron gas, advances in nanoscience and nanotechnology call for a greater effort to understand the opposite limit of small finite systems of electrons with size-dependent properties. In this work, we provide a detailed description of the properties of a finite fully spin-polarized (spinless) free homogeneous one-dimensional electron gas, the simplest of the free homogeneous electron gases. We derive exact analytical results for various quantities such as the one-particle density function, two-particle density function, one-particle density matrix, pair correlation function and energy of finite systems with an arbitrary number of electrons. The results obtained provide a detailed view on how various quantities corresponding to a finite system approach their bulk (thermodynamic limit) value.

Jianmin Tao, Giovanni Vignale, Jian‐Xin Zhu

The foundation of many approximations in time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) lies in the theory of the homogeneous electron gas. However, unlike the ground-state DFT, in which the exchange-correlation potential of the homogeneous electron gas is known exactly via the quantum Monte Carlo calculation, the time-dependent or frequency-dependent dynamical potential of the homogeneous electron gas has not been known exactly, due to the absence of a similar variational principle for excited states. In this work, we present a simple geometric derivation of the time-dependent dynamical exchange-correlation potential for the homogeneous system. With this derivation, the dynamical potential can be expressed in terms of the stress tensor, offering an alternative to calculate the bulk and shear moduli, two key input quantities in TDDFT.