Density Functional Theory (DFT) is a quantum mechanical modeling method used to investigate the electronic structure of many-body systems, particularly atoms, molecules, and the condensed phases. The central concept of DFT is that the properties of a many-electron system can be determined using the electron density rather than the many-particle wave function. This approach simplifies calculations significantly since the electron density is a function of only three spatial coordinates, compared to the wave function which depends on coordinates for electrons.
In DFT, the total energy of the system is expressed as a functional of the electron density, which can be written as:
where is the kinetic energy functional, represents the classical Coulomb interaction, and accounts for the exchange-correlation energy. This framework allows for efficient calculations of ground state properties and is widely applied in fields like materials science, chemistry, and nanotechnology due to its balance between accuracy and computational efficiency.
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