Lower Semicontinuity of the Universal Functional in Paramagnetic Current-Density Functional Theory

J Phys Chem Lett. 2021 Feb 11;12(5):1421-1425. doi: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.0c03422. Epub 2021 Feb 1.

Abstract

A cornerstone of current-density functional theory (CDFT) in its paramagnetic formulation is proven. After a brief outline of the mathematical structure of CDFT, the lower semicontinuity and expectation-valuedness of the CDFT constrained-search functional is proven, meaning that there is always a minimizing density matrix in the CDFT constrained-search universal density functional. These results place the mathematical framework of CDFT on the same footing as that of standard DFT.