Modeling Inhomogeneous Warm Dense Matter

The results of the analysis of the accuracy of the commonly used ground-state exchange-correlation (XC) functionals (LDA, PBE, PBEsol, AM05, SCAN) at warm dense matter conditions are presented [1,2]. We considered both unpolarized and polarized electrons. The analysis is performed by comparing to the available path-integral quantum Monte-Carlo (QMC) data. The relative deviation of the total density from the reference data is reported for different XC functionals in the case of the inhomogeneous electron gas. As a key finding of our evaluation, we emphasize that the overall performance of the ground-state XC functionals worsens with increasing the wavenumber of density perturbation.
Finally, the non-linear static density response of electrons is investigated using KS-DFT approach [3]. The results are verified by comparing to the QMC data when thermal temperature is equal to the Fermi temperature. New results for partially and strongly degenerate electrons are presented.

REFERENCES

[1] Z. Moldabekov, T.Dornheim, M. Böhme, J. Vorberger, A. Cangi, The relevance of electronic perturbations in the warm dense electron gas. The Journal of Chemical Physics 155, 124116 (2021).
[2] Z. Moldabekov, T.Dornheim, J. Vorberger, A. Cangi, Benchmarking Exchange-Correlation Functionals in the Spin-Polarized Inhomogeneous Electron Gas under Warm Dense Conditions. Physical Review B, accepted for publication (2022), arXiv:2110.06708 .
[3] Z.Moldabekov, T. Dornheim, J. Vorberger, Density-Functional-Theory Perspective on the Non-Linear Response of Correlated Electrons Across Temperature Regimes, arXiv:2201.01623 (2022)