Reply to “Comment on ‘Critique of the foundations of time-dependent density-functional theory’ ”

Abstract

In a recent Comment (arXiv:0710.0018), Maitra, Burke, and van Leeuwen (MBL) attempt to refute our criticism of the foundations of TDDFT (see Phys. Rev. A 75, 022513 (2007)). However, their arguments miss the essence of our position. This is mainly due to an ambiguity concerning the meaning of the so-called mapping derivation of time-dependent Kohn-Sham equations. We distinguish two different conceptions, referred to as potential-functional based fixed-point iteration (PF-FPI) and direct Kohn-Sham potential (DKSP) scheme, respectively. We argue that the DKSP scheme, apparently adopted by MBL, is not a density-functional method at all. The PF-FPI concept, on the other hand, while legitimately predicated on the Runge-Gross mapping theorem, is invalid because the convergence of the fixed-point iteration is not assured