Generalization of the variational principle and the Hohenberg and Kohn theorems for excited states of Fermion systems

Through the entanglement of a collection of K non-interacting replicas of a system of N interacting Fermions, and making use of the properties of reduced density matrices the variational principle and the theorems of Hohenberg and Kohn are generalized to excited states. The generalization of the variational principle makes use of the natural orbitals of an N-particle density matrix describing the state of lowest energy of the entangled state. The extension of the theorems of Hohenberg and Kohn is based on the ground-state formulation of density functional theory but with a new interpretation of the concept of a ground state: It is the state of lowest energy of a system of KN Fermions that is described in terms of the excited states of the N-particle interacting system. This straightforward implementation of the line of reasoning of ground-state density functional theory to a new domain leads to a unique and logically valid extension of the theory to excited states that allows the systematic treatment of all states in the spectrum of the Hamiltonian of an interacting system.