Correlation potentials, ground-state exchange

In section 2 the theory of ensembles is reviewed. Section 3 summarizes the parameter-free theory of G par[ll]. The self-consistently determined ensemble a parameters of the ensemble Xa potential are presented. In section 4 spin-polarized calculations using several ground-state exchange-correlation potentials are discussed. In section 5 the w dependence of the ensemble a parameters is studied. It is emphasized that the excitation energy can not generally be calculated as a difference of the one-electron energies. The additional term should also be determined. Section 6 presents accurate... 

First excitation energies determined from ground-state exchange-correlation potentials... 

Table II presents the first excitation energies obtained from spin- polarized calculations [24]. As ground-state exchange-correlation potentials were used the extra term in Eq.(20) does not appear. This is, certainly, one of the reasons for the difference between the calculated and the experimental excitation energies. There is a definite improvement comparing with the nonspin-polarized results [13]. Still, in most cases the calculated excitation energies are highly overestimated. The results provided by the different local density approximations are quite close to each other. The best one seems to be the Gunnarson-Lundqvist-Wilkins approximation. (In non-spin-polarized case the Perdew-Zunger parametrization gives results closest to the experimental data[30].)...

FIGURE 7.1 Exchange-correlation potential Vxc (in atomic units) for neon as a function of distance r (in atomic units) from the nucleus. The potential is obtained from the ground-state density by employing the ZP method. 

The construction of exchange correlation potentials and energies becomes a task for which not much guidance can be obtained from fundamental theory. The form of dependence on the electron density is generally not known and can only to a limited extent be obtained from theoretical considerations. The best one can do is to assume some functional dependence on the density with parameters to satisfy some consistency criteria and to fit calculated results to some model systems for which applications of proper quantum mechanical theory can be used as comparisons. At best this results in some form of ad-hoc semi-empirical method, which may be used with success for simulations of molecular ground state properties, but is certainly not universal. 

Clever use of this approach and choice of exchange correlation potential has produced methods for calculating molecular ground state properties and energetics in reasonable agreement with experimental numbers for an impressive array of systems. The fact that these methods are computationally inexpensive make them applicable to larger systems than can routinely be studied with proper quantum mechanical approaches. This makes them useful simulation tools. 

Density functional approaches to molecular electronic structure rely on the existence theorem [10] of a universal functional of the electron density. Since this theorem does not provide any direction as to how such a functional should be constructed, the functionals in existence are obtained by relying on various physical models, such as the uniform electron gas and others. In particular, the construction of an exchange-correlation potential that depends on the electron density only locally seems impossible without some approximations. Such approximate exchange-correlation potentials have been derived and applied with some success for the description of molecular electronic ground states and their properties. However, there is no credible evidence that such simple constructions can lead to either systematic approximate treatments, or an exact description of molecular electronic properties. The exact functional that seems to... 

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