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

Title: FDE-vdW: A van der Waals inclusive subsystem density-functional theory

Journal Article · · Journal of Chemical Physics
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4890839· OSTI ID:22419928
;  [1];  [2]
  1. Department of Chemistry, Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey 07102 (United States)
  2. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Montclair State University, Montclair, New Jersey 07043 (United States)

We present a formally exact van der Waals inclusive electronic structure theory, called FDE-vdW, based on the Frozen Density Embedding formulation of subsystem Density-Functional Theory. In subsystem DFT, the energy functional is composed of subsystem additive and non-additive terms. We show that an appropriate definition of the long-range correlation energy is given by the value of the non-additive correlation functional. This functional is evaluated using the fluctuation–dissipation theorem aided by a formally exact decomposition of the response functions into subsystem contributions. FDE-vdW is derived in detail and several approximate schemes are proposed, which lead to practical implementations of the method. We show that FDE-vdW is Casimir-Polder consistent, i.e., it reduces to the generalized Casimir-Polder formula for asymptotic inter-subsystems separations. Pilot calculations of binding energies of 13 weakly bound complexes singled out from the S22 set show a dramatic improvement upon semilocal subsystem DFT, provided that an appropriate exchange functional is employed. The convergence of FDE-vdW with basis set size is discussed, as well as its dependence on the choice of associated density functional approximant.

OSTI ID:
22419928
Journal Information:
Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 141, Issue 4; Other Information: (c) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0021-9606
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English