Density functional theory for strongly interacting electrons

Abstract

In the last three years, the mathematical structure of the strong-interaction limit of density functional theory (DFT) has been uncovered, and exact information on this limit has started to become available. In this talk I will illustrate two examples in which this new piece of exact information can be used to treat physical situations that are problematic for standard Kohn-Sham DFT. In the first example, more related to Physics, the strong-interaction limit of density functional theory is used to define a new framework to do practical, non-conventional, DFT calculations on medium- and strongly-correlated nanodevices such as quantum dots. The second example, more related to Chemistry, shows how including the exact treatment of the strong-interaction limit into approximate exchangecorrelation energy density functionals can be crucial to describe difficult situations such as the breaking of the chemical bond