Virial inversion and density functionals

Abstract

We prove a novel inversion theorem for functionals given as power series in infinite-dimensional spaces and apply it to the inversion of the density-activity relation for inhomogeneous systems. This provides a rigorous framework to prove convergence for density functionals for inhomogeneous systems with applications in classical density function theory, liquid crystals, molecules with various shapes or other internal degrees of freedom. The key technical tool is the representation of the inverse via a fixed point equation and a combinatorial identity for trees, which allows us to obtain convergence estimates in situations where Banach inversion fails. Moreover, the new method for the inversion gives for the (homogeneous) hard sphere gas a significantly improved radius of convergence for the virial expansion improving the first and up to now best result by Lebowitz and Penrose (1964).