The Pauli exclusion principle gives an upper bound of 1 on the natural occupation numbers. Recently there has been an intriguing amount of theoretical evidence that there is a plethora of additional generalized Pauli restrictions or (in)equalities, of kinematic nature, satisfied by these numbers [1]. Here for the first time a numerical analysis of the nature of such constraints is effected in real atoms. The inequalities are nearly saturated, or quasi-pinned. For rank-six and rank-seven approximations for lithium, the deviation from saturation is smaller than the lowest occupancy number. For a rank-eight approximation we find well-defined families of saturation conditions.
We train a neural network as the universal exchange-correlation functional of density-functional theory that simultaneously reproduces both the exact exchange-correlation energy and potential. This functional is extremely non-local, but retains the computational scaling of traditional local or semi-local approximations. It therefore holds the promise of solving some of the delocalization problems that plague density-functional theory, while maintaining the computational efficiency that characterizes the Kohn-Sham equations. Furthermore, by using automatic differentiation, a capability present in modern machine-learning frameworks, we impose the exact mathematical relation between the exchange-correlation energy and the potential, leading to a fully consistent method. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach by looking at one-dimensional systems with two strongly-correlated electrons, where density-functional methods are known to fail, and investigate the behavior and performance of our functional by varying the degree of non-
Some of the most spectacular failures of density-functional and Hartree-Fock theories are related to an incorrect description of the so-called static electron correlation. Motivated by recent progress on the N-representability problem of the one-body density matrix for pure states, we propose a way to quantify the static contribution to the electronic correlation. By studying several molecular systems we show that our proposal correlates well with our intuition of static and dynamic electron correlation. Our results bring out the paramount importance of the occupancy of the highest occupied natural spin-orbital in such quantification.PACS numbers: 31.15. V-, 31.15.xr, 31.70.-f
Postulated by Pauli to explain the electronic structure of atoms and molecules, the exclusion principle establishes an upper bound of 1 for fermionic natural occupation numbers {n i }. A recent analysis of the pure N -representability problem provides a wide set of inequalities for the {n i }, leading to constraints on these numbers. This has a strong potential impact on reduced density matrix functional theory as we know it. In this work we continue our study of the nature of these inequalities for some atomic and molecular systems. The results indicate that (quasi)saturation of some of them leads to selection rules for the dominant configurations in configuration interaction expansions, in favorable cases providing means for significantly reducing their computational requirements.
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