PREFACE

Back in 2004 while celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the discovery of timedependent density functional theory (TDDFT) we decided to take on the endeavor of making TDDFT really accessible to all students and researchers. Although a relatively young field, TDDFT was already beginning to rise as a method of choice in Materials Science and Quantum Chemistry, for the description of spectroscopic and non-equilibrium properties of both finite and extended systems. To this end, we set up the Benasque TDDFT series of school and workshops, a 2 week intensive meeting on TDDFT held every 2 years, nested in the beautiful Pyrenees. The Benasque TDDFT meeting is now well-established as the key training event and conference in the field. Now that we are facing the fifth edition of the event, we felt it was timely to have a pedagogical edition of our original 2006 book on TDDFT. The present volume is not a re-edition but a real new project that shares a few parts with the old book, but that has far more focus on the fundamentals and also includes new developments of the last few years of this rapidly-evolving field. Thus we give it the title of ‘‘Fundamentals of Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory’’.