Challenging adiabatic time-dependent density functional theory with a Hubbard dimer: the case of time-resolved long-range charge transfer

Abstract

We explore an asymmetric two-fermion Hubbard dimer to test the accuracy of the adiabatic approximation of time-dependent density functional theory in modelling time-resolved charge transfer. We show that the model shares essential features of a ground state long-range molecule in real-space, and by applying a resonant field we show that the model also reproduces essential traits of the CT dynamics. The simplicity of the model allows us to propagate with an “adiabatically-exact” approximation, i.e. one that uses the exact ground-state exchange–correlation functional, and compare with the exact propagation. This allows us to study the impact of the time-dependent charge-transfer step feature in the exact correlation potential of real molecules on the resulting dynamics. Tuning the parameters of the dimer allows a study both of charge-transfer between open-shell fragments and between closed-shell fragments. We find that the adiabatically-exact functional is unable to properly transfer charge, even in situations where the adiabatically-exact resonance frequency is remarkably close to the exact resonance, and we analyze why.