Kinetic energy density functionals for non-periodic systems

Kinetic energy functionals of the electronic density are used to model large systems in the context of density functional theory, without the need to obtain electronic wavefunctions. We discuss the problems associated with the application of widely used kinetic energy functionals to non-periodic systems. We develop a method that circumvents this difficulty and allows the kinetic energy to be evaluated entirely in real space. We demonstrate that the method is efficient [O(N)] and accurate by comparing the results of our real-space formulation to calculations performed in reciprocal space, and to calculations using traditional approaches based on electronic states.