No Arabic abstract
Orbital-Free Density Functional Theory (OF-DFT) promises to describe the electronic structure of very large quantum systems, being its computational cost linear with the system size. However, the OF-DFT accuracy strongly depends on the approximation made for the kinetic energy (KE) functional. To date, the most accurate KE functionals are non-local functionals based on the linear-response kernel of the homogeneous electron gas, i.e. the jellium model. Here, we use the linear-response kernel of the jellium-with-gap model, to construct a simple non-local KE functional (named KGAP) which depends on the band gap energy. In the limit of vanishing energy-gap (i.e. in the case of metals), the KGAP is equivalent to the Smargiassi-Madden (SM) functional, which is accurate for metals. For a series of semiconductors (with different energy-gaps), the KGAP performs much better than SM, and results are close to the state-of-the-art functionals with complicated density-dependent kernels.
Employing a local formula for the electron-electron interaction energy, we derive a self-consistent approximation for the total energy of a general $N$-electron system. Our scheme works as a local variant of the Thomas-Fermi approximation and yields the total energy and density as a function of the external potential, the number of electrons, and the chemical potential determined upon normalization. Our tests for Hookes atoms, jellium, and model atoms up to $sim 1000$ electrons show that reasonable total energies can be obtained with almost a negligible computational cost. The results are also consistent in the important large-$N$ limit.
We present a kinetic-energy density-functional theory and the corresponding kinetic-energy Kohn-Sham (keKS) scheme on a lattice and show that by including more observables explicitly in a density-functional approach already simple approximation strategies lead to very accurate results. Here we promote the kinetic-energy density to a fundamental variable along side the density and show for specific cases (analytically and numerically) that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the external pair of on-site potential and site-dependent hopping and the internal pair of density and kinetic-energy density. Based on this mapping we establish two unknown effective fields, the mean-field exchange-correlation potential and the mean-field exchange-correlation hopping, that force the keKS system to generate the same kinetic-energy density and density as the fully interacting one. We show, by a decomposition based on the equations of motions for the density and the kinetic-energy density, that we can construct simple orbital-dependent functionals that outperform the corresponding exact-exchange Kohn-Sham (KS) approximation of standard density-functional theory. We do so by considering the exact KS and keKS systems and compare the unknown correlation contributions as well as by comparing self-consistent calculations based on the mean-field exchange for the keKS and the exact-exchange for the KS system, respectively.
We present a rigorous framework that combines single-particle Greens function theory with density functional theory based on a separation of electron-electron interactions into short-range and long-range components. Short-range contributions to the total energy and exchange-correlation potential are provided by a density functional approximation, while the long-range contribution is calculated using an explicit many-body Greens function method. Such a hybrid results in a nonlocal, dynamic, and orbital-dependent exchange-correlation functional of a single-particle Greens function. In particular, we present a range-separated hybrid functional called srSVWN5-lrGF2 which combines the local-density approximation and the second-order Greens function theory. We illustrate that similarly to density functional approximations the new functional is weakly basis-set dependent. Furthermore, it offers an improved description of the short-range dynamical correlation. The many-body contribution to the functional allows us to mitigate the many-electron self-interaction error present in most of density functional approximations and provides a better description of molecular properties. Additionally, the new functional can be used to scale down the self-energy and, therefore, introduce an additional sparsity to the self-energy matrix that in the future can be exploited in calculations for large molecules or periodic systems.
Time-dependent orbital-free DFT is an efficient method for calculating the dynamic properties of large scale quantum systems due to the low computational cost compared to standard time-dependent DFT. We formalize this method by mapping the real system of interacting fermions onto a fictitious system of non-interacting bosons. The dynamic Pauli potential and associated kernel emerge as key ingredients of time-tependent orbital-free DFT. Using the uniform electron gas as a model system, we derive an approximate frequency-dependent Pauli kernel. Pilot calculations suggest that space nonlocality is a key feature for this kernel. Nonlocal terms arise already in the second order expansion with respect to unitless frequency and reciprocal space variable ($frac{omega}{q, k_F}$ and $frac{q}{2, k_F}$, respectively). Given the encouraging performance of the proposed kernel, we expect it will lead to more accurate orbital-free DFT simulations of nanoscale systems out of equilibrium. Additionally, the proposed path to formulate nonadiabatic Pauli kernels presents several avenues for further improvements which can be exploited in future works to improve the results.
In orbital-free density functional theory the kinetic potential (KP), the functional derivative of the kinetic energy density functional, appears in the Euler equation for the electron density and may be more amenable to simple approximations. We study properties of two solid-state systems, Al and Si, using two nonlocal KPs that gave good results for atoms. Very accurate results are found for Al, but results for Si are much less satisfactory, illustrating the general need for a better treatment of extended covalent systems. A different integration pathway in the KP formalism may prove useful in attacking this fundamental problem.