Kohn-Sham density functional theory, orbital occupation numbers

So the highest occupied Kohn-Sham orbital has a fractional occupation number to. The fact that is uniquely defined by follows directly from the Hohenberg-Kohn theorem applied to the non-interacting system. The proof of the Hohenberg-Kohn theorem for systems with noninteger number of electrons proceeds along the same lines as for systems with integer particle number (alternatively it can be obtained from the zero temperature limit of temperature dependent density functional theory [82]). We further split up v, as... 

A good first approach to a quantum mechanical system is often to consider one-electron functions only, associating one such function, a spin-orbital , with one electron. Most popular are the one-electron functions which minimize the energy in the sense of Hartree-Fock theory. Alternatively one can start from a post-HF wave function and consider the strongly occupied natural spin orbitals (i.e. the eigenfunctions of the one-particle density matrix with occupation numbers close to 1) as the best one-electron functions. Another possibility is to use the Kohn-Sham orbitals, although their physical meaning is not so clear. 

The second approach is used by Baerends and co-workers. They use linear response theory, but instead of calculating the full linear response function they use the response function of the noninteracting Kohn-Sham system together with an effective potential. This response function can be calculated from the Kohn-Sham orbitals and energies and the occupation numbers. They use the adiabatic local density approximation (ALDA), and so their exchange correlation kernel, /xc (which is the functional derivative of the exchange correlation potential, Vxc, with respect to the time-dependent density) is local in space and in time. They report frequency dependent polarizabilities for rare gas atoms, and static polarizabilities for molecules. 

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