A Simple Local Correlation Energy Functional for Spherically Confined Atoms from ab Initio Correlation Energy Density.

We propose a simple method of calculating the electron correlation energy density ec (r) and the correlation potential Vc (r) from second-order Møller-Plesset amplitudes and its generalization for the case of a configuration interaction wavefunction, based on Nesbet's theorem. The correlation energy density obtained by this method for free and spherically confined Be and He atoms was employed to fit a local analytical density functional based on Wigner's functional. The functional is capable of producing a strong increase in the correlation energy with decreasing confined radius for the Be atom.