Excited State Densities from Time-Dependent Density Functional Response Theory (2506.05082v1)

Abstract: While the variational principle for excited-state energies leads to a route to obtaining excited-state densities from time-dependent density functional theory, relatively little attention has been paid to the quality of the resulting densities in real space obtained with different exchange-correlation functional approximations, nor how non-adiabatic approximations developed for energies of states of double excitation character perform for their densities. Here we derive an expression directly in real space for the excited-state density, that includes the case of non-adiabatic kernels, and consequently is able, for the first time, to yield densities of states of double-excitation character. Under some well-defined simplifications, we compare the performance of the local-density approximation and exact-exchange approximation, which are in a sense at opposite extremes of the fundamental functional approximations, on local and charge-transfer excitations in one-dimensional model systems, and show that the dressed TDDFT approach gives good densities of double-excitations.