We have calculated total energies of atoms and diatomic molecules from the Luttinger-Ward functional, using self-energy approximations to second order as well as the $GW$ approximation. In order to assess the variational quality of this functional, we have also solved the Dyson equation self-consistently. The Luttinger-Ward functional is compared to the variational functional due to Klein, and we demonstrate that the variational property of the latter functional is inferior to that of the Luttinger-Ward functional. We also show how to obtain variational density functionals from the functionals of the Green function. These orbital functional schemes are important for systems where density-functional theory using local functionals of the density necessarily fails. We derive an optimized effective potential (OEP) scheme that is based on the Luttinger-Ward functional and, unlike the conventional OEP schemes, produces energies in good agreement with the values obtained from the self-consistent Green function. Our calculations show that, when applied to molecules, the Luttinger-Ward functional is more sensitive to the quality of the input Green function than when applied to atoms, but the energies are remarkably close to the self-consistent values when the Hartree-Fock Green function is used as input. This Luttinger-Ward functional is therefore a simple and efficient method for studying the merits of various self-energy approximations while avoiding the computationally demanding task of solving the Dyson equation self-consistently.

• Received 7 March 2005

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.73.012511