If the electron-electron repulsion in an atom or molecule were very weak, it could be treated by orbital-based perturbation theory. If this repulsion were very strong, it could be treated in a model of strict correlation. A simple interaction strength interpolation between these two limits, at fixed electron density, can describe the reality that lies between the extremes. By working entirely within a sophisticated density functional approximation, the meta-generalized gradient approximation, we find that the interpolation error is only about 0.1% for the exchange-correlation energy and about 4 kcal/mole = 0.17 eV for the atomization energy. We also find that real systems probably lie close to the radius of convergence of density functional perturbation theory.
Discussion(0)
No comments yet. Be the first to comment.