Comment on "Discussion on `Novel attractive force between ions in quantum plasmas -- failure of simulations based on a density functional approach"

Abstract

In a recent article [P.K. Shukla, B. Eliasson and M. Akbari-Moghanjoughi, Physica Scripta {\bf 87}, 018202 (2013)] the authors criticized our analysis of the screened proton potential in dense hydrogen that was based on {\em ab initio} density functional theory (DFT) simulations [M. Bonitz, E. Pehlke, and T. Schoof, Phys. Rev. E {\bf 87}, 037102 (2013)]. In particular, they attributed the absence of the Shukla-Eliasson attractive force between protons in the DFT simulations to a failure of DFT. Here we discuss in detail their arguments and show that their conclusions are incorrect.