  Our paper [Phys. Rev. A 93, 052512 (2016)], proposing a novel form of single
determinant wave function that admits non-idempotent 1-electron density
matrices, has recently received a Comment [Phys. Rev. A ??, 0????? (2017)]
suggesting a number of flaws: The form of the 1-electron density matrix that we
proposed is deemed invalid; None of the currently known functionals are given
in terms of the 1-electron density matrix but known only in the basis where the
density matrix is diagonal; In NOFT the energy is not invariant with respect to
unitary transformations of the orbitals; The M\"uller functional we used
suffers from serious shortcomings; In NOFT there detachment energies should be
obtained from the extended Koopmans theorem. Below we will address these
criticisms in sequence.
