Density Functional Theory for Field Theorists I

Abstract

I summarize Density Functional Theory (DFT) in a language familiar to quantum field theorists, and introduce several apparently novel ideas for constructing {\it systematic} approximations for the density functional. I also note that, at least within the large $K$ approximation ($K$ is the number of electron spin components), it is easier to compute the quantum effective action of the Coulomb photon field, which is related to the density functional by algebraic manipulations in momentum space.