Abstract: 

Warm Dense Matter (WDM) can be found in a myriad of useful and worthwhile applications, whether it be in the ongoing study of inertial confinement fusion, novel shock experiments, or planetary interiors. One crucial tool that has revolutionized our understanding of WDM over the last few decades has been Finite-Temperature Density Functional Theory (FT-DFT), which has enabled various groundbreaking simulations in the field (often when experimental studies were too difficult and costly to be performed). Although successful, modern implementations of FT-DFT suffer from significant drawbacks, namely the large computational burden inherent to studying high-temperature materials, and the lack of sophisticated approximations describing temperature-dependent exchange-correlation interactions. The research presented in this dissertation works to address these fundamental challenges both directly and indirectly.