Density Thomas-Fermi model

Models for the electronic structure of polynuclear systems were also developed. Except for metals, where a free electron model of the valence electrons was used, all methods were based on a description of the electronic structure in terms of atomic orbitals. Direct numerical solutions of the Hartree-Fock equations were not feasible and the Thomas-Fermi density model gave ridiculous results. Instead, two different models were introduced. The valence bond formulation (5) followed closely the concepts of chemical bonds between atoms which predated quantum theory (and even the discovery of the electron). In this formulation certain reasonable "configurations" were constructed by drawing bonds between unpaired electrons on different atoms. A mathematical function formed from a sum of products of atomic orbitals was used to represent each configuration. The energy and electronic structure was then... 

Density functional theory-based methods ultimately derive from quantum mechanics research from the 1920 s, especially the Thomas-Fermi-Dirac model, and from Slater s fundamental work in quantum chemistry in the 1950 s. The DFT approach is based upon a strategy of modeling electron correlation via general functionals of the electron density. 

The Thomas-Fermi (TF) model (1927) for a homogeneous electron gas provides the underpinnings of modern DFT. In the following discussion, it will be shown that the model generates several useful concepts, relates the electron density to the potential, and gives a universal differential equation for the direct calculation of electron density. The two main assumptions of the TF model are as follows ... 

The idea of calculating atomic and molecular properties from electron density appears to have arisen from calculations made independently by Enrico Fermi and P.A.M. Dirac in the 1920s on an ideal electron gas, work now well-known as the Fermi-Dirac statistics [19]. In independent work by Fermi [20] and Thomas [21], atoms were modelled as systems with a positive potential (the nucleus) located in a uniform (homogeneous) electron gas. This obviously unrealistic idealization, the Thomas-Fermi model [22], or with embellishments by Dirac the Thomas-Fermi-Dirac model [22], gave surprisingly good results for atoms, but failed completely for molecules it predicted all molecules to be unstable toward dissociation into their atoms (indeed, this is a theorem in Thomas-Fermi theory). 

At the present time, by far the most useful non-empirical alternatives to Cl are the methods based on density functional theory (DFT) . The development of DFT can be traced from its pre-quantum-mechanical roots in Drude s treatment of the electron gas" in metals and Sommerfeld s quantum-statistical version of this, through the Thomas-Fermi-Dirac model of the atom. Slater s Xa method, the laying of the formal foundations by... 

The first generation is the local density approximation (LDA). This estimation involves the Dirac functional for exchange, which is nothing else than the functional proposed by Dirac [15] in 1927 for the so-called Thomas-Fermi-Dirac model of the atoms. For the correlation energy, some parameterizations have been proposed, and the formula can be considered as the limit of what can be obtained at this level of approximation [16-18], The Xa approximation falls into this category, since a known proportion of the exchange energy approximates the correlation. 

Fig. 1 Exact and Thomas-Fermi electron density n as a function of position z for the Airy gas model with force F = 0.10. The scaling length is 1 = 1.71. The edge region is —/ < z < / and the Thomas-Fermi density is reasonably accurate for z > I- The infinite barrier is at z = 201 = 34.2. The magnitudes of the densities in this figure are valence-electron-like the density parameter Ts (the radius of a sphere containing on average one electron) is about 3.3 at z = I and about 1.3 at z = 10 (atomic units)...

For some computational techniques in quantum chemistry a simple zero-th order approximation of the electron density of any atom of the system can be useful as the starting point of an iterative procedure. A very simple description of the electron density and binding energy of any atom or ion allows a rapid evaluation of very complex stmctures. This is the spirit of the orbital-free, explicit density functional approaches, usually based on the Thomas-Fermi-Dirac model and its extensions [1]. 

However, this formula is found by including the Scott correction [3] to the energy of the Thomas-Fermi-Dirac model, and this approach does not provide a correspondingly corrected density. 

The minimization of the energy functional with respect to the density for r > ro leads to the integral equation of the Thomas-Fermi-Dirac model restricted to this region. This was solved numerically with some constraints that must be imposed because of a wrong asymptotic behavior of the exact solution when r 00,... 

In this work a simple analytical atomic density model is obtained from the expression of a modified Thomas-Fermi-Dirac model with quantum corrections near the nucleus as the minimization of a semiexplicit density functional. The use of a simple exponential analytical form for the density outside the near-nucleus region and the resolution of a single-particle Schrodinger equation with an effective potential near the origin allows us to solve easily the problem and obtain an asymptotic expression for the energy of an atom or ion in terms of the nuclear charge Z and the number of electrons N. 

Slater proposes an effective quantum number n = 3.7, the atomic factor can only be presented in the form of a sum with an infinite number of components. The series may be terminated if the effective quantum number for the N shell is taken as 3.5, 4.0, or 4.5. We calculated values of the atomic factor for the neutral Br atom with different values of n. The most satisfactory agreement with the theoretical form factors, calculated according to the Thomas—Fermi—Dirac model, was obtained at n — 4.5 screening coefficients proposed in [11] were used in the calculations. The equation of the atomic scattering function for the N shell in the case of a spherically symmetrical electron density distribution and n — 4.5 has the following form ... 

The simplest approximation is the local-density approximation (LDA), based upon the exact exchange energy for a uniform electron gas, which can be obtained from the Thomas-Fermi (TF) model, and from fits to the correlation energy for a uniform electron gas. 

The energy functional, i.e., the energy expressed in terms of the density (r) in the TFD (Thomas-Fermi-Dirac) model is expressed as [206]... 

In this section we will approach the question which is at the very heart of density functional theory can we possibly replace the complicated N-electron wave function with its dependence on 3N spatial plus N spin variables by a simpler quantity, such as the electron density After using plausibility arguments to demonstrate that this seems to be a sensible thing to do, we introduce two early realizations of this idea, the Thomas-Fermi model and Slater s approximation of Hartree-Fock exchange defining the X(/ method. The discussion in this chapter will prepare us for the next steps, where we will encounter physically sound reasons why the density is really all we need. 

Actually, the first attempts to use the electron density rather than the wave function for obtaining information about atomic and molecular systems are almost as old as is quantum mechanics itself and date back to the early work of Thomas, 1927 and Fermi, 1927. In the present context, their approach is of only historical interest. We therefore refrain from an in-depth discussion of the Thomas-Fermi model and restrict ourselves to a brief summary of the conclusions important to the general discussion of DFT. The reader interested in learning more about this approach is encouraged to consult the rich review literature on this subject, for example by March, 1975, 1992 or by Parr and Yang, 1989. 

In the Thomas-Fermi model,49 the kinetic energy density of the electron gas is written as... 

The universal function x(x) obtained by numerical integration and valid for all neutral atoms decreases monotonically. The electron density is similar for all atoms, except for a different length scale, which is determined by the quantity b and proportional to Z. The density is poorly determined at both small and large values of r. However, since most electrons in complex atoms are at intermediate distances from the nucleus the Thomas-Fermi model is useful for calculating quantities that depend on the average electron density, such as the total energy. The Thomas-Fermi model therefore cannot account for the periodic properties of atoms, but provides a good estimate of initial fields used in more elaborate calculations like those to be discussed in the next section. 

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