Fast calculation of retarded potentials in multi-domain TDDFT

A formulation for the efficient calculation of the electromagnetic retarded potential generated by time-dependent electron density in the context of real-time time dependent density functional theory (RT-TDDFT) is presented. The electron density is considered to be spatially separable, which is suitable for systems that include several molecules or nano-particles. The formulation is based on splitting the domain of interest into sub-domains and calculating the time dependent retarded potentials from each sub-domain separately. The computation is further accelerated by using the fast Fourier transform and parallelization. We demonstrate this approach by solving the orbitals' dynamics in systems of two molecules at varied distances. We first show that for small distances we get exactly the results that are expected from non-retarded potentials and then demonstrate that for large distances between sub-domains we obtain substantial retardation effects.