collaborators

8 papers

physics.chem-ph2026

RPA as a Hessian Closure: Effective Functionals and Source-Variable Duality Across DFT, LR-TDDFT, 1RDMFT, and MBPT

Nan Sheng

We present a variational formulation of the random phase approximation (RPA) that places density functional theory (DFT), linear-response time-dependent density functional theory (…

physics.chem-ph2026

A unified variational framework for the inverse Kohn-Sham problem

Nan Sheng

The inverse Kohn-Sham (KS) problem seeks a local effective potential whose noninteracting ground state reproduces a prescribed electron density. Although many inversion formulation…

physics.chem-ph2026

Full-State and Reduced-Moment Encodings: A Representation-Level View of Equilibrium Quantum Many-Body Theory

Nan Sheng

Equilibrium quantum many-body methods differ not only in approximation, but in which information they represent explicitly. We formulate this distinction by fixing an equilibrium s…

physics.chem-ph2026

Exact density-functional theory as parallel ensemble variational hierarchies: from Lieb's formulation to Kohn-Sham theory

Nan Sheng

Exact density-functional theory is recast here as two parallel exact ensemble variational hierarchies: an interacting hierarchy rooted in Lieb's ensemble formulation and a noninter…

physics.chem-ph2026

A density-functional perspective on force fields

Nan Sheng

Force fields are usually formulated directly in nuclear configuration space, whereas density functional theory is naturally formulated in terms of external potentials, densities, a…

cs.AI2026

Agentic Discovery of Exchange-Correlation Density Functionals

Titouan Duston, Jiashu Liang, Yuanheng Wang +6

The development of accurate exchange-correlation (XC) functionals remains a longstanding challenge in density functional theory (DFT). The vast majority of XC functionals have been…