Strictly correlated electrons in density functional theory: A general formulation with applications to spherical densities

TL;DR

This paper reformulates the strong-interaction limit in density functional theory as a classical problem, providing explicit solutions for spherical densities and comparing with previous approximations to enhance understanding of electron correlation.

Contribution

It introduces a general formulation of the strong-interaction limit in DFT as a classical problem with explicit solutions for spherical densities.

Findings

Explicit solutions for spherical densities in the strong-interaction limit

Comparison with previous approximate solutions

Clarification of the strong-interaction limit in DFT

Abstract

We reformulate the strong-interaction limit of electronic density functional theory in terms of a classical problem with a degenerate minimum. This allows us to clarify many aspects of this limit, and to write a general solution, which is explicitly calculated for spherical densities. We then compare our results with previous approximate solutions and discuss the implications for density functional theory.