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Density functionals for the Pauli-Fierz Hamiltonian

Primarily AI-generated textHuman understanding: all partsmath-ph — Mathematical Physicsmath.AP — Analysis of PDEsmath.OC — Optimization and Controlquant-ph — Quantum Physics

Contributed by Mihaly A. Csirik ↗, Andre Laestadius ↗, Markus Penz ↗, Erik I. Tellgren ↗

Version 1 / Nov 02, 2026 / CC BY 4.0

Abstract

We develop a density-functional theory for the Pauli-Fierz Hamiltonian of nonrelativistic quantum electrodynamics in the spirit of the convex-analytic formulation of Lieb. We consider finitely many electrons, subject to external scalar and vector potentials, coupled to the full continuum of massless transverse photons with an ultraviolet cutoff. The natural basic variables are the standard electron density and a combined current density, the sum of the paramagnetic current density and a field-induced current density generated by the quantized vector potential. We prove representability results for these density-current pairs and show that the mixed-state constrained-search functional attains its infimum and coincides with the Lieb functional obtained by convex conjugation. Since arbitrarily soft photons purify mixed states at a negligible energy cost without changing their density and combined current density, the pure-state Levy-Lieb functional equals the Lieb functional and is therefore convex, even though its infimum need not be attained. In addition, we establish the zero-coupling limit, which recovers the mixed-state Vignale-Rasolt functional of current-density-functional theory. Finally, we consider the long-wavelength (dipole) limit and show that the limiting functional can be written as a constrained search for the well-known length-gauge dipole Hamiltonian.

Provenance statement

Github repo: https://github.com/xyzw/qedft_pf_pub

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Version history

  1. v1Submitted by Mihaly A. CsirikInitial depositCurrentOct 31, 2026