Excess electron states in fluid methane: Density-functional versus Lanczos approaches

F Saiz and N Quirke and L Bernasconi and D Cubero, CHEMICAL PHYSICS LETTERS, 664, 143-148 (2016).

DOI: 10.1016/j.cplett.2016.10.033

We compare density-functional theory (DFT) electronic structure calculations at the hybrid B3LYP level for fluid methane with experiments and a pseudo-potential Lanczos method. We generate fluid configurations from classical/ab initio molecular dynamics and use DFT to determine one-particle orbital and total energies. Our results show that DFT predicts excess electron energies that qualitatively agree with experiments over a density range, provided these values are determined from total energy differences between charged and neutral systems. By contrast, orbital energies of the lowest unoccupied state of the N-electron system provide qualitatively incorrect excess electron energies as a function of the fluid density. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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