Exchange-correlation holes functions

A system of fundamental theoretical importance in many-body theory is the uniform-density electron gas. After decades of effort, exchange-correlation effects in this special though certainly not trivial system are by now well understood. In particular, sophisticated Monte Carlo simulations have provided very useful information (5) and have been conveniently parametrized by several authors (6). If the exchange-correlation hole function at a given reference point r in an atomic or molecular system is approximated by the hole function of a uniform electron gas with spin-densities given by the local values of p (r) and Pp(C obtain an... 

The definition of the exchange-correlation hole function hx ri, t2) is as follows ... 

The concept of the exchange-correlation hole is widely used in density functional theory and its most relevant properties are the subject of the following section. 

We do not distinguish here this density functional definition of exchange energy from that of Hartree-Fock (HF). This simplification is well-justified, if the HF electron density and the exact electron density differ only slightly [40]. Similarly, the coupling-constant averaged exchange-correlation hole is the usual... 

Fig. 7. Local on-top exchange-correlation hole at full coupling strength divided by density as a function of r in the He atom. The nuclear cusp produces greater LSD error for r-0...

Burke K, Perdew JP, Ernzerhof M, Accuracy of density functionals and system-averaged exchange-correlation holes, in preparation for Phys Rev Lett... 

In this review we will give an overview of the properties (asymptotics, shell-structure, bond midpoint peaks) of exact Kohn-Sham potentials in atomic and molecular systems. Reproduction of these properties is a much more severe test for approximate density functionals than the reproduction of global quantities such as energies. Moreover, as the local properties of the exchange-correlation potential such as the atomic shell structure and the molecular bond midpoint peaks are closely related to the behavior of the exchange-correlation hole in these shell and bond midpoint regions, one might be able to construct... 

From the above we can expect that, if the functional derivatives of the GGA functionals give a good representation of the properties of the exchange-correlation hole, the near-degeneracy correlation properties responsible for the bond midpoint peak will show up in the exchange potentials rather than the correlation potentials. 

In this nonvariational approach for the first term represents the potential of the exchange-correlation hole which has long range — 1/r asymptotics. We recognize the previously introduced splitup into the screening and screening response part of Eq. (69). As discussed in the section on the atomic shell structure the correct properties of the atomic sheU structure in v arise from a steplike behavior of the functional derivative of the pair-correlation function. However the WDA pair-correlation function does not exhibit this step structure in atoms and decays too smoothly [94]. A related deficiency is that the intershell contributions to E c are overestimated. Both deficiencies arise from the fact that it is very difficult to represent the atomic shell structure in terms of the smooth function p. Substantial improvement can be obtained however from a WDA scheme dependent on atomic shell densities [92,93]. In this way the overestimated intershell contributions are much reduced. Although this orbital-depen-... 

Nonempirical GGA functionals satisfy the uniform density limit. In addition, they satisfy several known, exact properties of the exchange-correlation hole. Two widely used nonempirical functionals that satisfy these properties are the Perdew-Wang 91 (PW91) functional and the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) functional. Because GGA functionals include more physical ingredients than the LDA functional, it is often assumed that nonempirical GGA functionals should be more accurate than the LDA. This is quite often true, but there are exceptions. One example is in the calculation of the surface energy of transition metals and oxides. 

The subscript zero on Xo refers to the fact that we have performed our perturbation theory as though the electrons were independent particles. In practice, as we have seen in 2.5, the motion of each electron is correlated through the exchange-correlation hole. This leads to an enhancement of the response function which can be written... 

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