Approximations that consider a truncated Hilbert space of single-particle orbitals yield promising results, however, with increasing complexity and demand for high accuracy the amount of Slater determinants to be evaluated massively increases.
In contrast, instead of using the description by the many-body wave function, the key point in density functional theory (DFT) is to recast the problem to a description utilizing the charge density $n(\vec{r})$, which constitutes a quantity in real space depending only on the three spatial coordinates.
Approximations that consider a truncated Hilbert space of single-particle orbitals yield promising results, however, with increasing complexity and demand for high accuracy the amount of Slater determinants to be evaluated massively increases.
In contrast, instead of using the description by the many-body wave function, the key point in density functional theory (DFT) is to recast the problem to a description utilizing the charge density $n(\vec{r})$, which constitutes a quantity in real space depending only on the three spatial coordinates.