New Frontiers in Classical Density Functional Theory 

The classical density functional theory (DFT) is a formally exact method to calculate the equilibrium properties of inhomogeneous fluids in external fields.

Its generalisation to nonequilibrium, the dynamical density functional theory (DDFT), enables approximate predictions to be made for the dynamics of the one-body density of soft-matter systems. 

The standard form of DDFT has been widely applied. However, it only manages to make qualitative predictions and fails in many situations of interest. In a recent sequence of papers J.M. Brader and S.M. Tschopp have  developed a next level theory, the superadiabatic-DDFT, addressing the above issues.

The preliminary work on building up the superadiabatic-DDFT framework has revealed an alternative route to calculating equilibrium density profiles, namely the force-DFT, as well as its direct generalisation to dynamics, the force-DDFT. Although the latter suffers the same shortcomings as its standard counterpart it is based on the virial rather than the compressibility route. These two frameworks are non-equivalent when using approximate generating functionals.

This one-time event will combine conference-style talks about recent developments related to (D)DFT and workshop sections to provide practical guidance in applying the new (D)DFT methodologies, with the hope of broadening the use of force-DFT and superadiabatic-DDFT beyond Fribourg.

Topics to be discussed include the following:

• fundamental concepts of density functional theory (DFT)
• standard versus force-DFT frameworks
• inhomogeneous two-body correlation functions
• numerical methods for solving the inhomogeneous Ornstein-Zernike (OZ) equation
• dynamical density functional theory (DDFT)
• standard, force- and superadiabatic-DDFT frameworks
• memory effects: Time locality versus Memory kernels
• zero-flux condition on hard-core interacting particles
• numerical subtleties in implementing force-(D)DFT and superadiabatic-DDFT
• driven systems