In the widely-used Kohn-Sham density functional theory for the manyelectron ground state, only the density functional for the exchange-correlation energy is approximated. While the exact density functional minimizes at the exact ground-state energy for any system, widely used approximations can at best describe normally-correlated ground states. A “proper” approximation for a given problem is defined as one that well describes relevant normally-correlated states. Strong correlation, present in many quantum materials, can arise due to abnormally high degeneracy of the Kohn-Sham occupied and unoccupied one-electron energies near the Fermi level. In such situations, the approximate functional may lower its energy by spontaneously breaking symmetries that the ground-state density shares with the many-electron Hamiltonian, reducing the degeneracies that lead to strong correlation. Here the Levy constrained search is invoked to argue that the total energy of a “proper” functional with maximal spontaneous symmetry breaking is bounded from below by the exact total energy, and that the bound may be close to the extent that the abnormal degeneracies are removed. This is a consequence of a variational principle, and it may not hold in non-variational but more accurate approaches to normal correlation such as coupled cluster theory. Since the correlation energy of any one-electron state is zero, a widely “proper” approximate functional should be nearly or exactly self-interaction free, and progress toward a proper self-interaction correction is reviewed here. The time-centered physical interpretation of symmetry breaking is also discussed.
In the widely-used Kohn-Sham density functional theory for the manyelectron ground state, only the density functional for the exchange-correlation energy is approximated. While the exact density functional minimizes at the exact ground-state energy for any system, widely used approximations can at best describe normally-correlated ground states. A “proper” approximation for a given problem is defined as one that well describes relevant normally-correlated states. Strong correlation, present in many quantum materials, can arise due to abnormally high degeneracy of the Kohn-Sham occupied and unoccupied one-electron energies near the Fermi level. In such situations, the approximate functional may lower its energy by spontaneously breaking symmetries that the ground-state density shares with the many-electron Hamiltonian, reducing the degeneracies that lead to strong correlation. Here the Levy constrained search is invoked to argue that the total energy of a “proper” functional with maximal spontaneous symmetry breaking is bounded from below by the exact total energy, and that the bound may be close to the extent that the abnormal degeneracies are removed. This is a consequence of a variational principle, and it may not hold in non-variational but more accurate approaches to normal correlation such as coupled cluster theory. Since the correlation energy of any one-electron state is zero, a widely “proper” approximate functional should be nearly or exactly self-interaction free, and progress toward a proper self-interaction correction is reviewed here. The time-centered physical interpretation of symmetry breaking is also discussed.
We present an alternative to the Kohn-Sham formulation of density-functional theory for the ground-state properties of strongly interacting electronic systems. The idea is to start from the limit of zero kinetic energy and systematically expand the universal energy functional of the density in powers of a "coupling constant" that controls the magnitude of the kinetic energy. The problem of minimizing the energy is reduced to the solution of a strictly correlated electron problem in the presence of an effective potential, which in our theory plays the same role as the Kohn-Sham potential plays in the traditional formulation. We discuss several schemes for approximating the energy functional, and report preliminary results for low-density quantum dots.
We use the exact strong-interaction limit of the Hohenberg-Kohn energy density functional to approximate the exchange-correlation energy of the restricted Kohn-Sham scheme. Our approximation corresponds to a highly nonlocal density functional whose functional derivative can be easily constructed, thus transforming exactly, in a physically transparent way, an important part of the electron-electron interaction into an effective local one-body potential. We test our approach on quasi-one-dimensional systems, showing that it captures essential features of strong correlation that restricted Kohn-Sham calculations using the currently available approximations cannot describe.
We introduce a scheme through which the ground-state electronic density n and total energy Ey[n] of inhomogeneous interacting systems can be determined in a self-consistent (SC) way. It is based on a SC perturbation expansion for the single-particle Green function G. Our employed expansion is argued to be valid under all conditions provided that the ground-state charge density of the interacting system is pure-state non-interacting v representable. The formalism discussed in this paper has been applied to a quasi-one-dimensional periodic system. It has even been possible to carry out SC calculations with the dynamically screened exchange diagram (the so-called G W diagram, where W is the dynamically screened electron4ectron interaction function) for the selfenergy operator C. A coherent mode of interpretation of a number of our results entails that the overwhelming success of the G W framework in relatively accurately reproducing the experimental energy gaps of a number of semiconductors and insulators may be a direct consequence of non-selfconsistency effects; whereas a non-self-consistent calculation in our tests increases the value of the local-density approximation (LDA) gap in the range of 40-65% of the ‘experimental’ gaps, self-consistency effects reduce this range to 1 4 1 7 % . The same line of argument leads us to conclude that, in our model, 2635% of the LDA error in the gap energies is due to the absence of a well known discontinuity in the LDA exchange-correlation potential, and the remaining part is due to the Kohn-Sham eigenvalues not being identifiable with one-particle excitation energies. A natural conclusion that may be drawn from these observations is that a correct description of excitation energies (e.g. of the gap energy) cannot be achieved without including, at least approximately, the vertex part of C, which is entirely absent in the GW scheme. 5 1 . INTRODUCTION The ground-state (GS) density-functional theory (DFT) due to Hohenberg and Kohn (1964) provides a rigorous foundation for determining properties of systems in their ground states (for reviews see Lundqvist and March (1983), Jones and Gunnarsson (1989) and Dreizler and Gross (1990)). The central position in this theory is taken by the total-energy functional EY[n] which, owing to its unique absolute minimum a t the GS electronic density n, can be used to obtain not only the GS energy but also the GS charge density. tPresent address: Max-Planck-Institut fur Festkorperforschung, HeisenbergstraRe 1, 70569 Stuttgart, Federal Republic of Germany. 0141-8637/97 $12 .00
We introduce a scheme through which the ground-state electronic density n and total energy Ev [n] of inhomogeneous interacting systems can be determined in a self-consistent (SC) way. It is based on a SC perturbation expansion for the single-particle Green function G. Our employed expansion is argued to be valid under all conditions provided that the ground-state charge density of the interacting system is pure-state non-interacting v representable. The formalism discussed in this paper has been applied to a quasi-one-dimensional periodic system. It has even been possible to carry out SC calculations with the dynamically screened exchange diagram (the so-called GW diagram, where W is the dynamically screened electron-electron interaction function) for the self-energy operator Σ. A coherent mode of interpretation of a number of our results entails that the overwhelming success of the GW framework in relatively accurately reproducing the experimental energy gaps of a number of semiconductors and insulators may be a direct consequence of non-self-consistency effects; whereas a non-self-consistent calculation in our tests increases the value of the local-density approximation (LDA) gap in the range of 40–65% of the ‘experimental’ gaps, self-consistency effects reduce this range to 14–17%. The same line of argument leads us to conclude that, in our model, 26–35% of the LDA error in the gap energies is due to the absence of a well known discontinuity in the LDA exchange-correlation potential, and the remaining part is due to the Kohn-Sham eigenvalues not being identifiable with one-particle excitation energies. A natural conclusion that may be drawn from these observations is that a correct description of excitation energies (e.g. of the gap energy) cannot be achieved without including, at least approximately, the vertex part of Σ, which is entirely absent in the GW scheme.
In this work, we explore the performance of approximations to electron correlation in reduced density-matrix functional theory (RDMFT) and of approximations to the observables calculated within this theory. Our analysis focuses on the calculation of total energies, occupation numbers, removal/addition energies, and spectral functions. We use the exactly solvable Hubbard dimer at 1/4 and 1/2 fillings as test systems. This allows us to analyze the underlying physics and to elucidate the origin of the observed trends. For comparison, we also report the results of the GW approximation, where the self-energy functional is approximated, but no further hypothesis is made concerning the approximations of the observables. In particular, we focus on the atomic limit, where the two sites of the dimer are pulled apart and electrons localize on either site with equal probability, unless a small perturbation is present: this is the regime of strong electron correlation. In this limit, using the Hubbard dimer at 1/2 filling with or without a spin-symmetry-broken ground state allows us to explore how degeneracies and spin-symmetry breaking are treated in RDMFT. We find that, within the used approximations, neither in RDMFT nor in GW, the signature of strong correlation is present, when looking at the removal/addition energies and spectral function from the spin-singlet ground state, whereas both give the exact result for the spin-symmetry broken case. Moreover, we show how the spectroscopic properties change from one spin structure to the other.
The well-known and well-used Density Functional Theory (DFT) is a variational theory for the ground-state. There are no guarantees that it delivers good results for excited state properties such as quasiparticle energies or wave function. All that is guaranteed is that the total energy is exact, the chemical potential is correct, and that the eective electronic states (Kohn-Sham states) generate the right electron density at the variational minimum. Luttinger-Ward approaches to electronic structure are attractive as beyond-DFT schemes since, in principle, they oer a variational functional of the one-electron Green’s function that yields both the correct total energy and all one-particle properties at the variational extremum. However, compared to DFT, these methods face a number of additional challenges beyond the familiar problem of choosing an exchange-correlation functional: (a) they have a much greater computational cost compared to DFT, (b) one must choose some set of trial Green’s functions, and (c) one must locate an extremum (not necessarily a minimum). This talk aims both to be pedagogical and to provide a summary of our most recent work in this area. We focus mainly on the random-phase approximation (RPA) for the correlation functional which yields the GW self-energy for the Green’s function. We will describe ecient approaches for computing the RPA correlation energy; how various types of approximations to the correlation energy create a ladder of approximate self-energy operators and what type of physics is included in these approximations (exchange, screening, Hubbard U, etc.); and how the extremization is in fact highly problematic. We will end with some ideas for making practical progress with the extremization and their relation to the successful Quasiparticle Self-consistent GW (QSGW) scheme [1].