Studies of Density Functional Methods for Finite and Extended Electron Systems

摘要

In this thesis approximate density-functional (DF) schemes have been studied. The exact DF effective potential and orbital eigenvalues have been obtained for the first time for a number of atomic systems and compared with their approximate counterparts. A general finding is that the exact DF eigenvalues lie above the corresponding excitation energies for deeper shells and below the excitation energies for unoccupied shells. However, the differences between the true DF eigenvalues and the corresponding excitation energies were found to be smaller than the error in the local-density (LD) approximation to the DF eigenvalues. Non-local approximations by Langreth, Perdew, and Mehl (LPM) and by Gunnarsson and co-workers have been tested and were found to substantially improve the total energies compared to the LD approximation but to give less improvements for the DF potential and DF eigenvalues. As a further test of the LPM scheme the beryllium metal has been studied, and the calculated cohesive energy and structure factor have been compared with experiments and with results from the LD approximation. (Atomindex citation 16:043197)