Dispersion Energy from Density-Functional Theory Description of Monomers

A method is proposed for calculations of dispersion energy at finite intermonomer separations. It uses a generalized Casimir-Polder formula evaluated with dynamic density susceptibilities provided by time-dependent density-functional theory. The method recovers the dispersion energies of He, Ne, and ${\mathrm{H}}_2\mathrm{O}$ dimers to within 3% or better. Since the computational effort of the new algorithm scales approximately as the third power of system size, the method is much more efficient than standard wave-function methods capable of predicting the dispersion energy at a similarly high level of accuracy.