Interatomic potentials via the effective-action formalism

We present a method for generating interatomic potentials from first-principles calculations. Using the effective-action formalism we describe a classical system of interacting atoms in terms of the expectation value of the pair density operator. Such a description naturally leads to the concept of the effective two-body interatomic potential. This is similar in spirit to the Kohn-Sham potential that arises in density-functional theory; however, in this case, the system is reduced from a fully interacting many-body system to an auxiliary system that interacts via a renormalized two-body potential. This potential contains the effects of three- and higher-body correlations and can be calculated via a systematic self-consistent procedure. This method can be trivially extended to the generation of higher-order interatomic potentials. [S0163-1829(98)09539-3].