A Density Difference Based Analysis of Orbital--Dependent Exchange--Correlation Functionals

We present a density difference based analysis for a range of orbital--dependent Kohn--Sham functionals. Results for atoms, some members of the neon isoelectronic series and small molecules are reported and compared with ab initio wave-function calculations. Particular attention is paid to the quality of approximations to the exchange--only optimized effective potential (OEP) approach: we consider both the Localized Hartree Fock as well as the Krieger-Li-Iafrate methods. Analysis of density differences at the exchange--only level reveals the impact the approximations have on the resulting electronic densities. These differences are further quantified in terms of the ground state energies, frontier orbital energy differences and highest occupied orbital energies obtained. At the correlated level an OEP approach based on a perturbative second--order correlation energy expression is shown to deliver results comparable with those from traditional wave function approaches, making it suitable for use as a benchmark against which to compare standard density--functional approximations.