Remarks on the semi-classical Hohenberg-Kohn functional

Abstract

In this note, we study an optimal transportation problem arising in density functional theory. We derive an upper bound on the semi-classical Hohenberg-Kohn functional derived by Cotar, Friesecke and Kl\"{u}ppelberg (2012) which can be computed in a straightforward way for a given single particle density. This complements a lower bound derived by the aforementioned authors. We also show that for radially symmetric densities the optimal transportation problem arising in the semi-classical Hohenberg-Kohn functional can be reduced to a 1-dimensional problem. This yields a simple new proof of the explicit solution to the optimal transport problem for two particles found by Cotar, Friesecke and Kl\"{u}ppelberg (2012). For more particles, we use our result to demonstrate two new qualitative facts: first, that the solution can concentrate on higher dimensional submanifolds and second that the solution can be non-unique, even with an additional symmetry constraint imposed.