A two-electron one-dimensional model of a heteroatomic molecule composed of two open-shell atoms is considered. Including only two electrons isolates and examines the effect that the highest occupied molecular orbital has on the Kohn-Sham potential as the molecule dissociates. We reproduce the characteristic step and peak that previous high-level wave function methods have shown to exist for real molecules in the low-density internuclear region. The simplicity of our model enables us to investigate in detail their development as a function of bond-length, with little computational effort, and derive properties of their features in the dissociation limit. We show that the onset of the step is coincident with the internuclear separation at which an avoided crossing between the ground-state and lowest charge-transfer excited-state is approached. Although the step and peak features have little effect on the ground-state energetics, we discuss their important consequences for dynamics and response.

We extend the Runge-Gross theorem for a very general class of open quantum systems under weak assumptions about the nature of the bath and its coupling to the system. We show that for Kohn-Sham (KS) time-dependent density functional theory, it is possible to rigorously include the effects of the environment within a bath functional in the KS potential. A Markovian bath functional inspired by the theory of nonlinear Schrödinger equations is suggested, which can be readily implemented in currently existing real-time codes. Finally, calculations on a helium model system are presented.

An enormous number of model chemistries are used in computational chemistry to solve or approximately solve the Schrödinger equation; each with their own drawbacks. One key limitation is that the hardware used in computational chemistry is based on classical physics, and is often not well suited for simulating models in quantum physics. In this review, we focus on applications of quantum computation to chemical physics problems. We describe the algorithms that have been proposed for the electronicstructure problem, the simulation of chemical dynamics, thermal state preparation, density functional theory and adiabatic quantum simulation.

Adiabatic time-dependent density functional theory fails for excitations of a heteroatomic molecule composed of two open-shell fragments at large separation. Strong frequency-dependence of the exchange-correlation kernel is necessary for both local and charge-transfer excitations. The root of this is static correlation created by the step in the exact Kohn-Sham ground-state potential between the two fragments. An approximate non-empirical kernel is derived for excited molecular dissociation curves at large separation. Our result is also relevant for the usual local and semi-local approximations for the ground-state potential, as static correlation there arises from the coalescence of the highest occupied and lowest unoccupied orbital energies as the molecule dissociates.

The dissipative dynamics of many-electron systems interacting with a thermal environment has remained a long-standing challenge within time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT). Recently, the formal foundations of open quantum systems time-dependent density functional theory (OQS-TDDFT) within the master equation approach were established. It was proven that the exact time-dependent density of a many-electron open quantum system evolving under a master equation can be reproduced with a closed (unitarily evolving) and non-interacting Kohn-Sham system. This potentially offers a great advantage over previous approaches to OQS-TDDFT, since with suitable functionals one could obtain the dissipative open-systems dynamics by simply propagating a set of Kohn-Sham orbitals as in usual TDDFT. However, the properties and exact conditions of such open-systems functionals are largely unknown. In the present article, we examine a simple and exactlysolvable model open quantum system: one electron in a harmonic well evolving under the Lindblad master equation. We examine two different representitive limits of the Lindblad equation (relaxation and pure dephasing) and are able to deduce a number of properties of the exact OQS-TDDFT functional. Challenges associated with developing approximate functionals for many-electron open quantum systems are also discussed.

Time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) is rapidly emerging as a premier method for solving dynamical many-body problems in physics and chemistry. The mathematical foundations of TDDFT are established through the formal existence of a fictitious non-interacting system (known as the Kohn--Sham system), which can reproduce the one-electron reduced probability density of the actual system. We build upon these works and show that on the interior of the domain of existence, the Kohn-Sham system can be efficiently obtained given the time-dependent density. We introduce a V-representability parameter which diverges at the boundary of the existence domain and serves to quantify the numerical difficulty of constructing the Kohn-Sham potential. For bounded values of V-representability, we present a polynomial time quantum algorithm to generate the time-dependent Kohn-Sham potential with controllable error bounds.

Time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) has recently been extended to describe many-body open quantum systems evolving under nonunitary dynamics according to a quantum master equation. In the master equation approach, electronic excitation spectra are broadened and shifted due to relaxation and dephasing of the electronic degrees of freedom by the surrounding environment. In this paper, we develop a formulation of TDDFT linear-response theory (LR-TDDFT) for many-body electronic systems evolving under a master equation, yielding broadened excitation spectra. This is done by mapping an interacting open quantum system onto a noninteracting open Kohn-Sham system yielding the correct nonequilibrium density evolution. A pseudoeigenvalue equation analogous to the Casida equations of the usual LR-TDDFT is derived for the Redfield master equation, yielding complex energies and Lamb shifts. As a simple demonstration, we calculate the spectrum of a C(2 +) atom including natural linewidths, by treating the electromagnetic field vacuum as a photon bath. The performance of an adiabatic exchange-correlation kernel is analyzed and a first-order frequency-dependent correction to the bare Kohn-Sham linewidth based on the Görling-Levy perturbation theory is calculated.

We prove that the theorems of TDDFT can be extended to a class of qubit Hamiltonians that are universal for quantum computation. The theorems of TDDFT applied to universal Hamiltonians imply that single-qubit expectation values can be used as the basic variables in quantum computation and information theory, rather than wavefunctions. From a practical standpoint this opens the possibility of approximating observables of interest in quantum computations directly in terms of single-qubit quantities (i.e. as density functionals). Additionally, we also demonstrate that TDDFT provides an exact prescription for simulating universal Hamiltonians with other universal Hamiltonians that have different, and possibly easier-to-realize two-qubit interactions. This establishes the foundations of TDDFT for quantum computation and opens the possibility of developing density functionals for use in quantum algorithms.