Unexpected properties of a density functional

Abstract

An observation on a pathological behavior of an exact density functional derived from either relativistic (Dirac) or nonrelativistic (L\'evy-Leblond) quantum-mechanical equation is reported. As expected, in the case of a one-electron atom the variational minimum of this functional is equal to the exact ground-state energy. However, apart from the correct density, this minimum is reached also by an infinite set of densities which do not correspond to the exact wave function. This paradoxical property of the functional is related to the multicomponent structure of both Dirac and L\'evy-Leblond wave functions. In particular, imposing the correct boundary conditions upon the trial densities removes only a part of the fake solutions. The results of this study demonstrate that in density-functional theories derived from models based on multicomponent wave functions, one should not expect any simple relation between the accuracy of the energy and the correctness of the corresponding density.