Density-functional calculation of ionization energies of current-carrying atomic states

Current-density-functional theory is used to calculate ionization energies of current-carrying atomic states. A recently proposed perturbative approximation to full current-density-functional theory is implemented and found to be numerically feasible. Different parametrizations for the current-dependence of the density functional are critically compared. Orbital currents in open-shell atoms turn out to produce a small shift in the ionization energies. We find that modern density functionals have reached an accuracy at which small current-related terms appearing in open-shell configurations are not negligible anymore, compared to the remaining difference to experiment.