FINITENESS OF THE NUMBER OF CRITICAL VALUES OF THE HARTREE-FOCK ENERGY FUNCTIONAL LESS THAN A CONSTANT SMALLER THAN THE FIRST ENERGY THRESHOLD

We study the Hartree-Fock equation and the Hartree-Fock energy functional universally used in many-electron problems. We prove that the set of all critical values of the Hartree-Fock energy functional less than a constant smaller than the first energy threshold is finite. Since the Hartree-Fock equation which is the corresponding Euler-Lagrange equation is a system of nonlinear eigenvalue problems, the spectral theory for linear operators is not applicable. The present result is obtained establishing the finiteness of the critical values associated with orbital energies less than a negative constant and combining the result with the Koopmans' well-known theorem. The main ingredients are the proof of convergence of the solutions and the analysis of the Fr\'echet second derivative of the functional at the limit point.