We derive necessary conditions for any two-fermion reduced density matrix (2-RDM) to be representable by a pure
N-fermion density matrix $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Psi}}{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Psi}}}^{*}$ where $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Psi}}$ is the wave function. These pure
N-representability conditions of the 2-RDM are important because they provide stringent constraints beyond those from the Pauli and the generalized Pauli constraints on the structure of many-fermion 2-RDMs and their wave functions. The pure 2-RDM conditions are derived as generalized Pauli constraints on effective one-fermion reduced density matrices (1-RDMs) generated by the removal or addition of a fermion from the wave function. Computationally, we show for four-electron molecules that the derived pure
N-representability conditions are nontrivially active for exact ground-state 2-RDMs and that they provide significant restrictions beyond the D, Q, and G ensemble
N-representability conditions. Constraints on higher-order
p-RDMs where
p>2 are derived in a similar fashion. The constraints have potentially significant applications to computing strongly correlated many-fermion states with enhanced accuracy and decreased computational complexity.
We recently presented a constructive solution to the
N-representability problem of the two-electron reduced density matrix (2-RDM)---a systematic approach to constructing complete conditions to ensure that the 2-RDM represents a realistic
N-electron quantum system [D. A. Mazziotti, Phys. Rev. Lett. (to be published)]. In this paper we provide additional details and derive further
N-representability conditions on the 2-RDM that follow from the constructive solution. The resulting conditions can be classified into a hierarchy of constraints, known as the
(2,q)-positivity conditions, where the
q indicates their derivation from the non-negativity of
q-body operators. In addition to the known T1 and T2 conditions, we derive another class of (2,3)-positivity conditions. We also derive 3 classes of (2,4)-positivity conditions, 6 classes of (2,5)-positivity conditions, and 24 classes of (2,6)-positivity conditions. The constraints obtained can be divided into two general types: (i) lifting conditions, that is, conditions which arise from lifting lower
(2,q)-positivity conditions to higher
(2,q+1)-positivity conditions, and (ii) pure conditions, that is, conditions which cannot be derived from a simple lifting of the lower conditions. All of the lifting conditions and the pure
(2,q)-positivity conditions for
q>3 require tensor decompositions of the coefficients in the model Hamiltonians. Subsets of the derived
N-representability conditions can be employed with the previously known conditions to achieve polynomially scaling calculations of ground-state energies and 2-RDMs of many-electron quantum systems even in the presence of strong electron correlation.
Here we present a many-body theory based on a solution of the N-representability problem in which the ground-state two-particle reduced density matrix (2-RDM) is determined directly without the many-particle wave function. We derive an equation that re-expresses physical constraints on higher-order RDMs to generate direct constraints on the 2-RDM, which are required for its derivation from an N-particle density matrix, known as N-representability conditions. The approach produces a complete hierarchy of 2-RDM constraints that do not depend explicitly upon the higher RDMs or the wave function. By using the two-particle part of a unitary decomposition of higher-order constraint matrices, we can solve the energy minimization by semidefinite programming in a form where the low-rank structure of these matrices can be potentially exploited. We illustrate by computing the ground-state electronic energy and properties of the H_{8} ring.
For the description of ground-state correlation phenomena an accurate mapping of many-body quantum mechanics onto four particles is developed. The energy for a quantum system with no more than two-particle interactions may be expressed in terms of a two-particle reduced density matrix (2-RDM), but variational optimization of the 2-RDM requires that it corresponds to an N-particle wave function. We derive N-representability conditions on the 2-RDM that guarantee the validity of the uncertainty relations for all operators with two-particle interactions. One of these conditions is shown to be necessary and sufficient to make the RDM solutions of the dispersion condition equivalent to those from the contracted Schr\"odinger equation (CSE) [Mazziotti, Phys. Rev. A 57, 4219 (1998)]. In general, the CSE is a stronger N-representability condition than the dispersion condition because the CSE implies the dispersion condition as well as additional N-representability constraints from the Hellmann-Feynman theorem. Energy minimization subject to the representability constraints is performed for a boson model with 10, 30, and 75 particles. Even when traditional wave-function methods fail at large perturbations, the present method yields correlation energies within 2%.
It is virtually impossible to directly solve the Schrödinger equation for a many-electron wave function due to the exponential growth in degrees of freedom with increasing particle number. The two-body reduced density matrix (2-RDM) formalism reduces this coordinate dependence to that of four particles irrespective of the wave function's dimensionality, providing a promising path to solve the many-body problem. Unfortunately, errors arise in this approach because the 2-RDM cannot practically be constrained to guarantee that it corresponds to a valid wave function. Here we approach this so-called
N-representability problem by expanding the 2-RDM in a complete basis of two-electron wave functions and studying the matrix formed by the expansion coefficients. This quantity, which we call the geminal density matrix (GDM), is found to evolve in time by a unitary transformation that preserves
N-representability. This evolution law enables us to calculate eigenstates of strongly correlated systems by a fictitious adiabatic evolution in which the electron-electron interaction is slowly switched on. We show how this technique is used to diagonalize atomic Hamiltonians, finding that the problem reduces to the solution of
∼N(N−1)/2 two-electron eigenstates of the Helium atom on a grid of electron-electron interaction scaling factors.
The reduction of density matrices defined with respect to a finite basis set is considered. A basis set can be introduced into the vector space of Hermitian matrices acting on functions of the coordinates of
p particles for each value of
p. An analogy with the construction of spin eigenfunctions is used to obtain a particular basis set called the reducing basis. Reduction of one of these basis elements is either one to one or maps into the origin. Any element in the preimage of a density matrix can thus be resolved into two components, one uniquely determined by the density matrix and the other arbitrary within a certin subset. A restatement of the
N-representability problem is given, and two sufficient conditions and one necessary condition for
N representability are given in terms of distances and norms.