Calibration of Energy-Specific TDDFT for Modeling K-edge XAS Spectra of Light Elements

X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) has become a powerful technique in chemical physics, because of advances in synchrotron technology that have greatly improved its temporal and spectroscopic resolution. Our recent work on energy-specific time-dependent density functional theory (ES-TDDFT) allows for the direct calculation of excitation energies in any region of the absorption spectrum, from UV-vis to X-ray. However, the ability of different density functional theories to model X-ray absorption spectra (XAS) of light elements has not yet been verified for ES-TDDFT. This work is a calibration of the ability of existing DFT kernels and basis sets to reproduce experimental K-edge excitation energies. Results were compared against 30 different transitions from gas-phase experiments. We focus on six commonly used density functionals (BHandHLYP, B3LYP, PBE1PBE, BP86, HSE06, LC-ωPBE) and various triple-ζ basis sets. The effects of core and diffuse functions are also investigated.