Entanglement and density-functional theory: Testing approximations on Hooke’s atom

Abstract

We present two methods of calculating the spatial entanglement of an interacting electron system within the framework of density-functional theory. These methods are tested on the model system of Hooke's atom for which the spatial entanglement can be exactly calculated. We analyze how the strength of the confining potential affects the spatial entanglement and how accurately the methods that we introduced reproduce the exact trends. We also compare the results to the outcomes of standard first-order perturbation methods. The accuracies of energies and densities when using these methods are also considered.