skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Optimization of an exchange-correlation density functional for water

Journal Article · · Journal of Chemical Physics
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4953081· OSTI ID:22660719
 [1];  [2];  [3]
  1. Departamento de Física de la Materia Condensada, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, E-28049 Madrid (Spain)
  2. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York 11794-3800 (United States)
  3. Departamento e Instituto de Física de la Materia Condensada, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, E-28049 Madrid (Spain)

We describe a method, that we call data projection onto parameter space (DPPS), to optimize an energy functional of the electron density, so that it reproduces a dataset of experimental magnitudes. Our scheme, based on Bayes theorem, constrains the optimized functional not to depart unphysically from existing ab initio functionals. The resulting functional maximizes the probability of being the “correct” parameterization of a given functional form, in the sense of Bayes theory. The application of DPPS to water sheds new light on why density functional theory has performed rather poorly for liquid water, on what improvements are needed, and on the intrinsic limitations of the generalized gradient approximation to electron exchange and correlation. Finally, we present tests of our water-optimized functional, that we call vdW-DF-w, showing that it performs very well for a variety of condensed water systems.

OSTI ID:
22660719
Journal Information:
Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 144, Issue 22; Other Information: (c) 2016 Author(s); Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0021-9606
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English