External field as the functional of inhomogeneous density and the density matrix functional approach

Based on the Hohenberg-Kohn lemma and the hypotheses of the density functional existence for the external-field potential, it is shown that the strict result of the density functional theory is the equation of the external-field potential as the density functional. This result leads to the impossibility of determining the inhomogeneous density in a given external field if the inhomogeneous density is not known a priori. The problem encountered is intimately associated with the absence of a regular procedure for determining the universal density functional. The result obtained shows the advantage of the density matrix functional theory which yields a correct description of the inhomogeneous electron system in both the ideal-gas approximation and the self-consistent Hartree-Fock approximation in contrast to the density functional theory. Copyright (C) EPLA, 2012