Improved density functional approximations from a new model of the uniform electron gas

Density functional theory (DFT) has become the most popular approach for predicting chemical behaviour from first principles. However, it still suffers from a number of known problems. This proposal aims to use spherium, a newly discovered model of the uniform electron gas, to construct a radical new density functional scheme that avoids the known deficiencies of DFT while retaining the attractive speed of DFT computation. This will allow molecular and solid-state chemists to perform predictive calculations of chemical structure, bonding and reactivity in large systems with unprecedented accuracy and efficiency.