0000000001175320
AUTHOR
R. Van Leeuwen
Many-Body Quantum Dynamics from the Density
We present a local control scheme to construct the external potential v that, for a given initial state, produces a prescribed time-dependent density in an interacting quantum many-body system. This numerical method is efficient and stable even for large and rapid density variations irrespective of the initial state and the interactions. It can at the same time be used to answer fundamental v-representability questions in density functional theory. In particular, in the absence of interactions, it allows us to construct the exact time-dependent Kohn-Sham potential for arbitrary initial states. We illustrate the method in a correlated one-dimensional two-electron system with different intera…
On the Kirzhnits gradient expansion in two dimensions
We derive the semiclassical Kirzhnits expansion of the D-dimensional one-particle density matrix up to the second order in $\hbar$. We focus on the two-dimensional (2D) case and show that all the gradient corrections both to the 2D one-particle density and to the kinetic energy density vanish. However, the 2D Kirzhnits expansion satisfies the consistency criterion of Gross and Proetto [J. Chem. Theory Comput. 5, 844 (2009)] for the functional derivatives of the density and the noninteracting kinetic energy with respect to the Kohn-Sham potential. Finally we show that the gradient correction to the exchange energy diverges in agreement with the previous linear-response study.
Density-potential mappings in quantum dynamics
In a recent letter [Europhys. Lett. 95, 13001 (2011)] the question of whether the density of a time-dependent quantum system determines its external potential was reformulated as a fixed point problem. This idea was used to generalize the existence and uniqueness theorems underlying time-dependent density functional theory. In this work we extend this proof to allow for more general norms and provide a numerical implementation of the fixed-point iteration scheme. We focus on the one-dimensional case as it allows for a more in-depth analysis using singular Sturm-Liouville theory and at the same time provides an easy visualization of the numerical applications in space and time. We give an ex…
Correlation effects in bistability at the nanoscale: Steady state and beyond
The possibility of finding multistability in the density and current of an interacting nanoscale junction coupled to semi-infinite leads is studied at various levels of approximation. The system is driven out of equilibrium by an external bias and the nonequilibrium properties are determined by real-time propagation using both time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) and many-body perturbation theory (MBPT). In TDDFT the exchange-correlation effects are described within a recently proposed adiabatic local density approximation (ALDA). In MBPT the electron-electron interaction is incorporated in a many-body self-energy which is then approximated at the Hartree-Fock (HF), second-Born,…
Diagrammatic expansion for positive density-response spectra: Application to the electron gas
In a recent paper [Phys. Rev. B 90, 115134 (2014)] we put forward a diagrammatic expansion for the self-energy which guarantees the positivity of the spectral function. In this work we extend the theory to the density response function. We write the generic diagram for the density-response spectrum as the sum of partitions. In a partition the original diagram is evaluated using time-ordered Green's functions (GF) on the left-half of the diagram, antitime-ordered GF on the right-half of the diagram and lesser or greater GF gluing the two halves. As there exist more than one way to cut a diagram in two halves, to every diagram corresponds more than one partition. We recognize that the most co…
Multicomponent Density-Functional Theory
The coupling between electronic and nuclear motion plays an essential role in a wide range of physical phenomena.
Ultra-nonlocality in density functional theory for photo-emission spectroscopy.
We derive an exact expression for the photo-current of photo-emission spectroscopy using time-dependent current density functional theory (TDCDFT). This expression is given as an integral over the Kohn-Sham spectral function renormalized by effective potentials that depend on the exchange-correlation kernel of current density functional theory. We analyze in detail the physical content of this expression by making a connection between the density-functional expression and the diagrammatic expansion of the photo-current within many-body perturbation theory. We further demonstrate that the density functional expression does not provide us with information on the kinetic energy distribution of…
Global fixed point proof of time-dependent density-functional theory
We reformulate and generalize the uniqueness and existence proofs of time-dependent density-functional theory. The central idea is to restate the fundamental one-to-one correspondence between densities and potentials as a global fixed point question for potentials on a given time-interval. We show that the unique fixed point, i.e. the unique potential generating a given density, is reached as the limiting point of an iterative procedure. The one-to-one correspondence between densities and potentials is a straightforward result provided that the response function of the divergence of the internal forces is bounded. The existence, i.e. the v-representability of a density, can be proven as wel…
Nonequilibrium Green's function approach to strongly correlated few-electron quantum dots
The effect of electron-electron scattering on the equilibrium properties of few-electron quantum dots is investigated by means of nonequilibrium Green's function theory. The ground and equilibrium states are self-consistently computed from the Matsubara (imaginary time) Green's function for the spatially inhomogeneous quantum dot system whose constituent charge carriers are treated as spin-polarized. To include correlations, the Dyson equation is solved, starting from a Hartree-Fock reference state, within a conserving (second-order) self-energy approximation where direct and exchange contributions to the electron-electron interaction are included on the same footing. We present results for…
Wick Theorem for General Initial States
We present a compact and simplified proof of a generalized Wick theorem to calculate the Green's function of bosonic and fermionic systems in an arbitrary initial state. It is shown that the decomposition of the non-interacting $n$-particle Green's function is equivalent to solving a boundary problem for the Martin-Schwinger hierarchy; for non-correlated initial states a one-line proof of the standard Wick theorem is given. Our result leads to new self-energy diagrams and an elegant relation with those of the imaginary-time formalism is derived. The theorem is easy to use and can be combined with any ground-state numerical technique to calculate time-dependent properties.
Multicomponent density-functional theory for time-dependent systems
We derive the basic formalism of density functional theory for time-dependent electron-nuclear systems. The basic variables of this theory are the electron density in body-fixed frame coordinates and the diagonal of the nuclear N-body density matrix. The body-fixed frame transformation is carried out in order to achieve an electron density that reflects the internal symmetry of the system. We discuss the implications of this body-fixed frame transformation and establish a Runge-Gross-type theorem and derive Kohn-Sham equations for the electrons and nuclei. We illustrate the formalism by performing calculations on a one-dimensional diatomic molecule for which the many-body Schrodinger equati…
Vertex corrections for positive-definite spectral functions of simple metals
We present a systematic study of vertex corrections in the homogeneous electron gas at metallic densities. The vertex diagrams are built using a recently proposed positive-definite diagrammatic expansion for the spectral function. The vertex function not only provides corrections to the well known plasmon and particle-hole scatterings, but also gives rise to new physical processes such as generation of two plasmon excitations or the decay of the one-particle state into a two-particles-one-hole state. By an efficient Monte Carlo momentum integration we are able to show that the additional scattering channels are responsible for the bandwidth reduction observed in photoemission experiments on…
Dynamically screened vertex correction to $GW$
Diagrammatic perturbation theory is a powerful tool for the investigation of interacting many-body systems, the self-energy operator $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Sigma}}$ encoding all the variety of scattering processes. In the simplest scenario of correlated electrons described by the $GW$ approximation for the electron self-energy, a particle transfers a part of its energy to neutral excitations. Higher-order (in screened Coulomb interaction $W$) self-energy diagrams lead to improved electron spectral functions (SFs) by taking more complicated scattering channels into account and by adding corrections to lower order self-energy terms. However, they also may lead to unphysical negative spectral f…
Local Control and v-Representability of Correlated Quantum Dynamics
We present a local control scheme to construct the external potential v that, for a given initial state, produces a prescribed time-dependent density in an interacting quantum many-body system. The numerical method is efficient and stable even for large and rapid density variations irrespective of the initial state and the interactions. The method can at the same time be used to answer fundamental v-representability questions in density-functional theory. In particular, in the absence of interactions, it allows us to construct the exact time-dependent Kohn-Sham potential for arbitrary initial states. We illustrate the method in a correlated one-dimensional two-electron system with different…
Natural occupation numbers: When do they vanish?
The non-vanishing of the natural orbital occupation numbers of the one-particle density matrix of many-body systems has important consequences for the existence of a density matrix-potential mapping for nonlocal potentials in reduced density matrix functional theory and for the validity of the extended Koopmans' Theorem. On the basis of Weyl's theorem we give a connection between the differentiability properties of the ground state wave function and the rate at which the natural occupations approach zero when ordered as a descending series. We show, in particular, that the presence of a Coulomb cusp in the wave function leads, in general, to a power law decay of the natural occupations, whe…
Curvature in graphene nanoribbons generates temporally and spatially focused electric currents
Today graphene nanoribbons and other graphene-based nanostructures can be synthesized with atomic precision. But while investigations have concentrated on straight graphene ribbons of fixed crystal orientation, ribbons with intrinsic curvature have remained mainly unexplored. Here, we investigate electronic transport in intrinsically curved graphene nanoribbons coupled to straight leads, using two computational approaches. Stationary approach shows that while the straight leads govern the conductance gap, the presence of curvature blurs the gap and reduces on-off ratio. An advanced time-dependent approach shows that behind the fa\c{c}ade of calm stationary transport the currents run violent…
Towards nonlocal density functionals by explicit modelling of the exchange-correlation hole in inhomogeneous systems
We put forward new approach for the development of a non-local density functional by a direct modeling of the shape of exchange-correlation (xc) hole in inhomogeneous systems. The functional is aimed at giving an accurate xc-energy and an accurate corresponding xc-potential even in difficult near-degeneracy situations such as molecular bond breaking. In particular we demand that: (1) the xc hole properly contains -1 electron, (2) the xc-potential has the asymptotic -1/r behavior outside finite systems and (3) the xc-potential has the correct step structure related to the derivative discontinuities of the xc-energy functional. None of the currently existing functionals satisfies all these re…
Contour calculus for many-particle functions
In non-equilibrium many-body perturbation theory, Langreth rules are an efficient way to extract real-time equations from contour ones. However, the standard rules are not applicable in cases that do not reduce to simple convolutions and multiplications. We introduce a procedure for extracting real-time equations from general multi-argument contour functions with an arbitrary number of arguments. This is done for both the standard Keldysh contour, as well as the extended contour with a vertical track that allows for general initial states. This amounts to the generalization of the standard Langreth rules to much more general situations. These rules involve multi-argument retarded functions …
Diagrammatic expansion for positive spectral functions beyond GW : Application to vertex corrections in the electron gas
We present a diagrammatic approach to construct self-energy approximations within many-body perturbation theory with positive spectral properties. The method cures the problem of negative spectral functions which arises from a straightforward inclusion of vertex diagrams beyond the GW approximation. Our approach consists of a two-steps procedure: we first express the approximate many-body self-energy as a product of half-diagrams and then identify the minimal number of half-diagrams to add in order to form a perfect square. The resulting self-energy is an unconventional sum of self-energy diagrams in which the internal lines of half a diagram are time-ordered Green's functions whereas those…
Real-time switching between multiple steady-states in quantum transport
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First-principles nonequilibrium Green's-function approach to transient photoabsorption: Application to atoms
We put forward a first-principle NonEquilibrium Green's Function (NEGF) approach to calculate the transient photoabsorption spectrum of optically thin samples. The method can deal with pump fields of arbitrary strength, frequency and duration as well as for overlapping and nonoverlapping pump and probe pulses. The electron-electron repulsion is accounted for by the correlation self-energy, and the resulting numerical scheme deals with matrices that scale quadratically with the system size. Two recent experiments, the first on helium and the second on krypton, are addressed. For the first experiment we explain the bending of the Autler-Townes absorption peaks with increasing the pump-probe d…
Comparative study of many-body perturbation theory and time-dependent density functional theory in the out-of-equilibrium Anderson model
We study time-dependent electron transport through an Anderson model. The electronic interactions on the impurity site are included via the self-energy approximations at Hartree-Fock (HF), second Born (2B), GW, and T-matrix levels as well as within a time-dependent density functional (TDDFT) scheme based on the adiabatic Bethe-ansatz local density approximation (ABALDA) for the exchange-correlation potential. The Anderson model is driven out of equilibrium by applying a bias to the leads, and its nonequilibrium dynamics is determined by real-time propagation. The time-dependent currents and densities are compared to benchmark results obtained with the time-dependent density matrix renormali…
Challenges in truncating the hierarchy of time-dependent reduced density matrices equations
In this work, we analyze the Born, Bogoliubov, Green, Kirkwood, and Yvon (BBGKY) hierarchy of equations for describing the full time evolution of a many-body fermionic system in terms of its reduced density matrices (at all orders). We provide an exhaustive study of the challenges and open problems linked to the truncation of such a hierarchy of equations to make them practically applicable. We restrict our analysis to the coupled evolution of the one- and two-body reduced density matrices, where higher-order correlation effects are embodied into the approximation used to close the equations. We prove that within this approach, the number of electrons and total energy are conserved, regardl…
Many-body Green's function theory for electron-phonon interactions: ground state properties of the Holstein dimer
We study ground-state properties of a two-site, two-electron Holstein model describing two molecules coupled indirectly via electron-phonon interaction by using both exact diagonalization and self-consistent diagrammatic many-body perturbation theory. The Hartree and self-consistent Born approximations used in the present work are studied at different levels of self-consistency. The governing equations are shown to exhibit multiple solutions when the electron-phonon interaction is sufficiently strong whereas at smaller interactions only a single solution is found. The additional solutions at larger electron-phonon couplings correspond to symmetry-broken states with inhomogeneous electron de…
Charge dynamics in molecular junctions: nonequilibrium Green's function approach made fast
Real-time Green's function simulations of molecular junctions (open quantum systems) are typically performed by solving the Kadanoff-Baym equations (KBE). The KBE, however, impose a serious limitation on the maximum propagation time due to the large memory storage needed. In this work we propose a simplified Green's function approach based on the Generalized Kadanoff-Baym Ansatz (GKBA) to overcome the KBE limitation on time, significantly speed up the calculations, and yet stay close to the KBE results. This is achieved through a twofold advance: first we show how to make the GKBA work in open systems and then construct a suitable quasi-particle propagator that includes correlation effects …
Quantum Control of Many-Body Systems by the Density
In this work we focus on a recently introduced method [1] to construct the external potential $v$ that, for a given initial state, produces a prescribed time-dependent density in an interacting quantum many-body system. We show how this method can also be used to perform flexible and efficient quantum control. The simple interpretation of the density (the amount of electrons per volume) allows us to use our physical intuition to consider interesting control problems and to easily restrict the search space in optimization problems. The method's origin in time-dependent density-functional theory makes studies of large systems possible. We further discuss the generalization of the method to hi…
Time-resolved photoabsorption in finite systems: A first-principles NEGF approach
We describe a first-principles NonEquilibrium Green’s Function (NEGF) approach to time-resolved photoabsortion spectroscopy in atomic and nanoscale systems. The method is used to highlight a recently discovered dynamical correlation effect in the spectrum of a Krypton gas subject to a strong ionizing pump pulse. We propose a minimal model that captures the effect, and study the performance of time-local approximations versus time-nonlocal ones. In particular we implement the time-local Hartree-Fock and Markovian second Born (2B) approximation as well as the exact adiabatic approximation within the Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory framework. For the time-nonlocal approximation we ins…
Analytic density functionals with initial-state dependence and memory
We analytically construct the wave function that, for a given initial state, produces a prescribed density for a quantum ring with two non-interacting particles in a singlet state. In this case the initial state is completely determined by the initial density, the initial time-derivative of the density and a single integer that characterizes the (angular) momentum of the system. We then give an exact analytic expression for the exchange-correlation potential that relates two non-interacting systems with different initial states. This is used to demonstrate how the Kohn-Sham procedure predicts the density of a reference system without the need of solving the reference system's Schr\"odinger …