An approximation scheme determining the excitations of an electronic model on the lattice with pairwise interactions is proposed. A systematic truncation of the set of Dyson-Schwinger equations for correlators, supplemented by a ``covariant'' calculation of correlators lead to a converging series of approximates. The covariance preserves all the Ward identities among correlators describing various condensed matter probes. It is shown that the third-order approximant of this kind beyond classical and Gaussian (Hartree-Fock) is precise enough and due to several fortunate features the complexity of calculation is surprisingly low so that a realistic material computation might be feasible. Focus here is on the electron field correlator describing the electron (hole) excitations measured in photoemission and other probes. The scheme is tested on several solvable benchmark models.
An approximation scheme determining the excitations of an electronic model on the lattice with pairwise interactions is proposed. A systematic truncation of the set of Dyson-Schwinger equations for correlators, supplemented by a ``covariant'' calculation of correlators lead to a converging series of approximates. The covariance preserves all the Ward identities among correlators describing various condensed matter probes. It is shown that the third-order approximant of this kind beyond classical and Gaussian (Hartree-Fock) is precise enough and due to several fortunate features the complexity of calculation is surprisingly low so that a realistic material computation might be feasible. Focus here is on the electron field correlator describing the electron (hole) excitations measured in photoemission and other probes. The scheme is tested on several solvable benchmark models.
A modified GW approximation to many-body systems is developed. The approximation has the same computational complexity as the traditional GW approach, but uses a different truncation scheme. This scheme neglects the high-order connected correlation functions. A covariant (preserving the Ward identities due to the charge conservation) scheme for the two-body correlators is employed, which holds the relation between the charge correlator and the charge susceptibility. The method is tested on the two-dimensional one-band Hubbard model. The results are compared with exact diagonalization, the GW approximation, the fluctuation-exchange (FLEX) theory, and determinantal Monte Carlo approach. The comparison for the (one-body) Green's function demonstrates that it is more precise in the strong-coupling regime (especially away from half filling) than the GW and FLEX approximations, which have a similar complexity. More importantly, this method indicates a Mott-Hubbard gap as the Hubbard U increases, whereas the GW and FLEX methods fail. In addition, the charge correlator obtained from the covariant scheme not only holds the consistency of the static charge susceptibility, but also makes a significant improvement over the random phase approximation calculations.
Strongly correlated electron systems are generally described by tight-binding lattice Hamiltonians with strong local (onsite) interactions, the most popular being the Hubbard model. Although the half-filled Hubbard model can be simulated by Monte Carlo (MC), physically more interesting cases beyond half-filling are plagued by the sign problem. One therefore should resort to other methods. It was demonstrated recently that a systematic truncation of the set of Dyson-Schwinger equations for correlators of the Hubbard, supplemented by a "covariant" calculation of correlators leads to a convergent series of approximants. The covariance preserves all the Ward identities among correlators describing various condensed matter probes. While first-order (classical), second-order (Hartree-Fock or Gaussian), and third-order (Cubic) covariant approximation were worked out, the fourth-order (quartic) seems too complicated to be effectively calculable in fermionic systems. It turns out that the complexity of the quartic calculation in local interaction models,is manageable computationally. The quartic (Bethe-Salpeter-type) approximation is especially important in 1D and 2D models in which the symmetry-broken state does not exists (the Mermin-Wagner theorem), although strong fluctuations dominate the physics at strong coupling. Unlike the lower-order approximations, it respects the Mermin-Wagner theorem. The scheme is tested and exemplified on the single-band 1D and 2D Hubbard model.
In this lecture we present many-body perturbation theory as a method to determine quasiparticle excitations in solids, especially electronic band structures, accurately from first principles.The main ingredient is the electronic self-energy that, in principle, contains all many-body exchange and correlation effects beyond the Hartree potential.As its exact mathematical expression is unknown, approximations must be used in practical calculations.The approximation is obtained using a systematic algebraic approach on the basis of Green function techniques.It constitutes an expansion of the self-energy up to linear order in the screened Coulomb potential, which describes the interaction between the quasiparticles and includes dynamic screening through the creation of exchange-correlation holes around the bare particles.The implementation of the approximation relies on a perturbative treatment starting from density functional theory.Besides a detailed mathematical discussion we focus on the underlying physical concepts and show some illustrative applications.
We propose a new, alternative method for ab-initio calculations of the electronic structure of solids, which has been specifically adapted to treat many-body effects in a more rigorous way than many existing ab-initio methods. We start from a standard band-structure calculation for an effective one-particle Hamiltonian approximately describing the material of interest. This yields a suitable set of one-particle basis functions, from which well localized Wannier functions can be constructed using a method proposed by Marzari and Vanderbilt. Within this (minimal) basis of localized Wannier functions the matrix elements of the non-interacting (one-particle) Hamiltonian as well as the Coulomb matrix elements can be calculated. The result is a many-body Hamiltonian in second quantization with parameters determined from first principles calculations for the material of interest. The Hamiltonian is in the form of a multi-band Hamiltonian in second quantization (a kind of extended, multi-band Hubbard model) such that all the standard many-body methods can be applied. We explicitly show how this approach can be solved in the simplest many-body approximation, the mean-field Hartree-Fock approximation (HFA), which takes into account exact exchange and corrects for self-interaction effects.
The most of the experimental measurable quantities in many-body electron system, such as the optical absorption, luminescent spectra and exciton effect, are related to the excitation states description. The density functional theory with local density approximation (DFT-LDA) as a ground state theory, i.e. the solutions based on the Kohn-Sham equation is a powerful tool for studying the ground state properties in many-particle systems. However, the first principles computation of excited states is more complexity than ground-state calculations. A key problem is that the exchange-correlation interaction in excited states is differ from the ground-states. In recent years, nevertheless, several electronic-excitation theories have been developed. The most important theoretical and computational method include the many-body perturbation theory which is based on the quasi-particle concept and the Green function equation, the time-dependent DFT and the Bethe-Salpeter equation for describing the electron-hole interaction. Among them the central ingredient is an electron's self-energy operator Σ that describes the exchange correlation effect beyond Hartree approximation. The implementations of the above theories are unavoidable to introduce some of approximations. A good approximation for Σ is the GW approach by Hedin. It is shown from computation simulations for many real condensed matter systems that the GW approach is a successful method for electronic-excitation problems. Another effective method for excited-states is so-called screen-exchange local-density approximation (sX-LDA). It is a combination of LDA and Hartree-Fock (HF)theory, in which the intrinsic local screen-exchange interaction has been replaced by a non-local one and a generalized Kohn-Sham equation (GKS) is given. Based on a PWscf package, the sX-LDA-PWscf method has been tested and indicates that an available approach for treating band-gap problem in semiconductors. In this paper, the many-body theories for the excitation process, its development and signification are reviewed. The relation and differences consist in different theoretical methods are discussed. On the based of above discussions, the applications of many-body theory to the band-band transition (band-gap underestimation problem) and exciton effect in semiconductors are presented.
In this thesis, an approximate method introduced to solve time-dependent many-body problems known as time-dependent many-body perturbation theory is studied. Many-body perturbation theory for interacting electrons and phonons is reviewed. In particular, the electron propagator G and an unconventional two-component phonon propagator, which satisfy coupled integral Dyson equations, are introduced. In practice, the associated integral kernels known as the electron Σ and phonon self-energies need to be approximated. The conserving approximations known as the Hartree (-Fock) and the first and second Born approximations, which respect the continuity equation between the electron density and current, are considered in this work. Time-dependent systems of interest are studied in this thesis by using the integro-differential forms of the Dyson equations referred to as the Kadanoff-Baym Equations (KBE). The Kadanoff-Baym equations are introduced for the electron and phonon propagators unconventionally as coupled firstorder integro-differential equations. It is reviewed how these equations are solved numerically by describing an integration rule, a class of practical methods and a parallel implementation of the numerical method. In addition, documentation of how the Kadanoff-Baym equations allow to solve the Bethe-Salpeter Equation (BSE) with the kernel δΣ/δG for the density response function, is provided. In two of the enclosed publications, we benchmarked observables obtained by using the Hartree and partially and fully self-consistent Born approximations against numerically exact results for the two- site, two-electron Holstein model. In this model, the two electrons which are constrained to move between two lattice sites interact indirectly via the electron-phonon coupling. It was observed that only the fully self-consistent Born approximation could cope qualitatively correctly with the competition between the delocalizing and localizing effects of the kinetic and interaction energies. For the other two approximations, spurious bifurcative symmetry breaking with an associated unbounded density response was observed. Nevertheless, also the self-consistent Born approximation was concluded to fail in describing the bipolaronic behavior of the true system. In the third publication, we benchmarked the Hartree-Fock and second Born approximations against an exact method for the few-site Hubbard and Pariser-Parr-Pople models in which the underlying lattice is inert and the electrons interact amongst themselves directly. It was found that the second Born approximation is capable of describing the so-called correlation induced doubly-excited states. This is not possible for time-local approximations such as Hartree-Fock. In addition to the qualitative results, which highlight successes of the applied simple self-energy approximations, the approximate and exact results were also compared on a more quantitative level. It is the quantitative and qualitative results combined which are used in this thesis to assess the quality of the many-body approximations used, with the aim to better understand when these methods are predictive.