Calculation of atomic excitation energies by time-dependent density functional theory within a modified linear...

Time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) has become a standard tool for investigation of electronic excited states. However, for certain types of electronic excitations, TDDFT is known to give systematically inaccurate results, which has been attributed to the insufficiency of conventional exchange-correlation functionals, such as the local density approximation (LDA). To improve TDDFT performance within LDA, a modified linear response (MLR) scheme was recently proposed, in which the responses from not only the ground state, but also the intermediate excited states are taken into account. This scheme was shown to greatly improve TDDFT performance on the prediction of Rydberg and charge-transfer excitation energies of molecules. Yet, for a validation of this TDDFT-MLR scheme for excitation energies, there remain issues to be resolved regarding Rydberg transitions of single atoms before going to larger systems. In the present work, we show an adapted algorithm to construct the intermediate excited states for rare-gas atoms. With the technique, Rydberg transition energies can be well decoded from LDA, as will also be shown in the application of the TDDFT-MLR scheme to other types of atoms.