The uniform electron gas at warm dense matter conditions

Abstract

Motivated by the current high interest in the field of warm dense matter research, in this article we review the uniform electron gas (UEG) at finite temperature and over a broad density range relevant for warm dense matter applications. We provide an exhaustive overview of different simulation techniques, focusing on recent developments in the dielectric formalism (linear response theory) and quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) methods. Our primary focus is on two novel QMC methods that have recently allowed us to achieve breakthroughs in the thermodynamics of the warm dense electron gas: Permutation blocking path integral MC (PB-PIMC) and configuration path integral MC (CPIMC). In fact, a combination of PB-PIMC and CPIMC has allowed for a highly accurate description of the warm dense UEG over a broad density–temperature range. We are able to effectively avoid the notorious fermion sign problem, without invoking uncontrolled approximations such as the fixed node approximation. Furthermore, a new finite-size correction scheme is presented that makes it possible to treat the UEG in the thermodynamic limit without loss of accuracy. In addition, we in detail discuss the construction of a parametrization of the exchange–correlation free energy, on the basis of these data — the central thermodynamic quantity that provides a complete description of the UEG and is of crucial importance as input for the simulation of real warm dense matter applications, e.g., via thermal density functional theory.A second major aspect of this review is the use of our ab initio simulation results to test previous theories, including restricted PIMC, finite-temperature Green functions, the classical mapping by Perrot and Dharma-wardana, and various dielectric methods such as the random phase approximation, or the Singwi–Tosi–Land–Sjölander (both in the static and quantum versions), Vashishta–Singwi and the recent Tanaka scheme for the local field correction. Thus, for the first time, thorough benchmarks of the accuracy of important approximation schemes regarding various quantities such as different energies, in particular the exchange–correlation free energy, and the static structure factor, are possible. In the final part of this paper, we outline a way how to rigorously extend our QMC studies to the inhomogeneous electron gas. We present first ab initio data for the static density response and for the static local field correction.