Workshop on Quantum Theory: Foundations and Extensions of Density-Functional Theory

The OsloMet Quantum Hub and the REGAL project are happy to announce a workshop on the mathematical aspects of density-functional theory (DFT). The workshop will take place at OsloMet, campus Pilestredet, from the 2nd to the 6th of December 2024.

The workshop is scheduled to start Monday after lunch (ca. 13:00) and finish early Friday afternoon (ca. 13:00).

Further details to be announced!

Participants

A list of confirmed participants can be found here. The list will be continuously updated.

Abstract

The workshop will focus on the mathematical foundations and recent extensions of density-functional theory (DFT), a prime method for computational quantum-mechanical modelling. The increased use of DFT in physical situations where electrons couple to quantized electromagnetic fields requires a thorough revision of the foundations of the theory. Moreover, the application to model settings — commonly employed to describe light-matter interactions — revealed new properties of the theory that remain to be studied in detail. Furthermore, many practical uses of DFT rely heavily on approximations to the universal density functional. One avenue for evaluating new functional approximations is to solve the so-called inverse problem, that is the problem of retrieving the potential of a system given its electronic density. Such approaches are typically referred to as density-potential inversion schemes and are significantly less studied than the forward problems such as the Kohn–Sham scheme. Combined with the fact that efficient and stable implementations of density-potential inversion algorithms are largely lacking, this problem is of both fundamental and practical importance to DFT. All these topics pose interesting mathematical as well as numerical challenges that are of great relevance across multiple disciplines such as solid-state physics, quantum chemistry, and quantum optics. The workshop thus aims at bringing together researchers working on these different subjects in order to advance the applicability of DFT in both novel and established domains.

Registration

To register for the workshop, please use the Nettskjema.

Contact

For any questions, please contact the organisers.