Ultra-intense lasers deliver unprecedented energy densities within microscopic volumes and shortest time spans, as exemplified by last year’s Physics Nobel Prize. Today, these lasers facilitate many compact technical applications such as particle accelerators and sources of intense electromagnetic radiation. And the next development stages promise significant technical advancements as well as deep insights into fundamental science ranging from nonlinear quantum field theory to studying the complex quantum vacuum itself. [mehr]

For a quantum-mechanical system and a given density, the Zhao-Morrison-Parr method allows to infer the effective potential that yields precisely this density. I will discuss how this can be understood as a limit procedure from Moreau-Yosida-regularized density functionals to the unregularized case. This sheds new insight on the relevance of regularization in density-functional theory and allows to systematically improve density-potential inversion. [mehr]