Electronic exchange in quantum rings: Beyond the local-density approximation

Quantum rings can be characterized by a specific radius and ring width. For this rich class of physical systems, an accurate approximation for the exchange-hole potential and thus for the exchange energy is derived from first principles. Excellent agreement with the exact-exchange results is obtained regardless of the ring parameters, total spin, current, or the external magnetic field. The description can be applied as a density functional outperforming the commonly used local spin-density approximation, which is here explicitly shown to break down in the quasi-one-dimensional limit. The dimensional crossover, which is of extraordinary importance in low-dimensional systems, is fully captured by our functional.