Exact Excited-State Functionals of the Asymmetric Hubbard Dimer

The exact functionals associated with the (singlet) ground and the two singlet excited states of the asymmetric Hubbard dimer at half-filling are calculated using both Levy's constrained search and Lieb's convex formulation. While the ground-state functional is, as commonly known, a convex function with respect to the density (or, more precisely, the site occupation), the functional associated with the (highest) doubly-excited state is found to be concave. Also, because the density of the first-excited state is non-invertible, its ``functional'' is a partial, multi-valued function composed of one concave and one convex branch that correspond to two separate sets of values of the external potential. Remarkably, it is found that, although the one-to-one mapping between density and external potential may not apply (as in the case of the first excited state), each state-specific energy and corresponding universal functional are ``functions'' whose derivatives are each other's inverse, just as in the ground state formalism. These findings offer insight into the challenges of developing state-specific excited-state density functionals for general applications in electronic structure theory.
Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures