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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Harnessing dressed time-dependent density functional theory for the nonperturbative regime: Electron dynamics with double excitations

Dhyey Ray1, Anna Baranova1, Davood B. Dar1,2, and Neepa T. Maitra1,*

  • *Contact author: neepa.maitra@rutgers.edu
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APS Open Sci. 1, L000014 – Published 1 May, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/rvf2-jf13

Abstract

Recent progress has been made in capturing spectral features of electronic states of double-excitation character in time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) through a frequency-dependent kernel. While it might appear that this development is limited to the perturbative regime, we show that when used within response-reformulated TDDFT (RR-TDDFT), it accurately captures strong-field dynamics involving states of double-excitation character. More generally, this demonstrates how RR-TDDFT enables exchange-correlation functional developments in the response regime, which have so far been more successful than those in the nonlinear regime, to be exploited for nonperturbative dynamics, thus significantly broadening their range of applications.

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APS Open Sci. 1, L000014– Published 1 May, 2026
Vol. 1
  • Received 20 October 2025
  • Accepted 16 April 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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