Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 355, Issue 6320, Pages 49-+Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.aah5975
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- Russian Science Foundation [14-13-00884]
- NSF [DMR-1305135, DMR-1607868]
- Humboldt Foundation
- MultiWFN program [29]
- Russian Science Foundation [17-13-00069, 14-13-00884] Funding Source: Russian Science Foundation
- Direct For Mathematical & Physical Scien
- Division Of Materials Research [1607868] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The theorems at the core of density functional theory (DFT) state that the energy of a many-electron system in its ground state is fully defined by its electron density distribution. This connection is made via the exact functional for the energy, which minimizes at the exact density. For years, DFT development focused on energies, implicitly assuming that functionals producing better energies become better approximations of the exact functional. We examined the other side of the coin: the energy-minimizing electron densities for atomic species, as produced by 128 historical and modern DFT functionals. We found that these densities became closer to the exact ones, reflecting theoretical advances, until the early 2000s, when this trend was reversed by unconstrained functionals sacrificing physical rigor for the flexibility of empirical fitting.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available