title: Binding energy curves from nonempirical density functionals II. van der Waals bonds in rare-gas and alkaline-earth diatomics.
abstract: Binding energy curves have been calculated for the ground-state rare-gas diatomics Ne(2) and Ar(2) and for the alkaline-earth diatomic Be(2) using the nonempirical density functionals from the first three rungs of a ladder of approximations: the local spin density (LSD) approximation, the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) generalized gradient approximation (GGA), and the Tao-Perdew-Staroverov-Scuseria (TPSS) meta-GGA. Binding energy curves in reasonable agreement with those constructed from experiment are found from PBE and TPSS, which incorporate inhomogeneity corrections that satisfy the Lieb-Oxford bound and so describe the short-range part of the van der Waals interaction. At large internuclear separation, these functionals produce an exponentially decaying attraction in place of the correct long-range -C(6)/R(6). Basis-set and exchange-only effects are also discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Quantum Theory Group, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana 70118, USA..
authors.forename: Adrienn
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Ruzsinszky
authors.forename: John P
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Perdew
authors.forename: Gábor I
authors.initials: GI
authors.lastname: Csonka