Missing derivative discontinuity of the exchange-correlation energy for attractive interactions: the charge Kondo effect

We show that the energy functional of ensemble Density Functional Theory (DFT) [Perdew et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 49, 1691 (1982)] in systems with attractive interactions is a convex function of the fractional particle number N and is given by a series of straight lines joining a subset of ground-state energies. As a consequence the exchange-correlation (XC) potential is not discontinuous for all N. We highlight the importance of this exact result in the ensemble-DFT description of the negative-U Anderson model. In the atomic limit the discontinuity of the XC potential is missing for odd N while for finite hybridizations the discontinuity at even N is broadened. We demonstrate that the inclusion of these properties in any approximate XC potential is crucial to reproduce the characteristic signatures of the charge-Kondo effect in the conductance and charge susceptibility.

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