https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2017-70046-0
Review
Reduced density-matrix functionals from many-particle theory
1 Institute for Theoretical Physics, Clausthal University of Technology, Leibnizstr. 10, 38678 Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany
2 Institute for Theoretical Physics, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Friedrich-Hund-Platz 1, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
3 Institute for Theoretical Physics, Universität Bremen, Otto-Hahn-Allee (NW1), 28359 Bremen, Germany
a e-mail: robert.schade@tu-clausthal.de
Received: 10 February 2017
Revised: 20 March 2017
Published online: 10 July 2017
In materials with strong electron correlation the proper treatment of local atomic physics described by orbital occupations is crucial. Reduced density-matrix functional theory is a natural extension of density functional theory for systems that are dominated by orbital physics. We review the current state of reduced density-matrix functional theory (RDMFT). For atomic structure relaxations or ab-initio molecular dynamics the combination of density functional theory (DFT) and dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) possesses a number of disadvantages, like the cumbersome evaluation of forces. We therefore describe a method, DFT+RDMFT, that combines many-particle effects based on reduced density-matrix functional theory with a density functional-like framework. A recent development is the construction of density-matrix functionals directly from many-particle theory such as methods from quantum chemistry or many-particle Green's functions. We present the underlying exact theorems and describe current progress towards quantitative functionals.
© The Author(s) 2017
Open Access This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
