London dispersion forces without density distortion: a path to first principles inclusion in density functional theory
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Updated: Dec 8, 2025

Multiscale Sampling of a Heterogeneous Water/Metal Catalyst Interface using Density Functional Theory and Force-Field Molecular Dynamics
Published on: April 12, 2019
Derk Pieter Kooi1, Paola Gori-Giorgi
1Department of Chemistry & Pharmaceutical Sciences, Amsterdam Institute of Molecular and Life Sciences (AIMMS), Faculty of Science, Vrije Universiteit, De Boelelaan 1083, 1081HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands. d.p.kooi@vu.nl.
Abstract:
We analyse a path to construct density functionals for the dispersion interaction energy from an expression in terms of the ground state densities and exchange-correlation holes of the isolated fragments. The expression is based on a constrained search formalism for a supramolecular wavefunction that is forced to leave the diagonal of the many-body density matrix of each fragment unchanged, and is exact for the interaction between one-electron densities. We discuss several aspects: the necessary features of a density functional approximation for the exchange-correlation holes of the monomers, the optimal choice of the one-electron basis (named "dispersals"), and the functional derivative with respect to monomer density variations.
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