DFT Jacob's Ladder

density functional theoryexchange-correlation energycomputational chemistryquantum chemistryelectronic structureDFT functionalshybrid functionalsmeta-GGAGGALDAcetz

A visualization of Perdew's Jacob's ladder of density functional theory (DFT), representing a hierarchy of increasingly sophisticated approximations to the exchange-correlation energy (E_xc). The ladder spans from simple local density approximations at the bottom to accurate but expensive double-hybrid functionals near the top, with each rung adding new physical ingredients to improve accuracy at the cost of computational complexity.