Reply to comment of Shukla et al. on 'On "Novel attractive forces" between ions in quantum plasmas - failure of linearized quantum hydrodynamics'

In an earlier paper we demonstrated that the "novel attractive force" between protons in dense hydrogen reported by Shukla and Eliasson based on linearized quantum hydrodynamics (LQHD) is wrong. As benchmark results we used state of the art density functional theory (DFT) simulations. In their response to that paper Shukla et al. (arXiv:1112.5556) claimed that the disagreement is due to a failure of DFT. Here we show - by comparing the properties and limitations of DFT and QHD - that their statements have no scientific basis and that DFT is a suitable benchmark for more approximate approaches such as QHD and LQHD.