The core of this thesis is the path-integral formulation of quantum field theory and its ability to describe strongly-coupled quantum many-body systems of finite size. Collective behaviors can be efficiently described in such systems through the implementation of spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) in mean-field approaches. However, as the thermodynamic limit does not make sense in finite-size systems, the latter can not exhibit any SSB and the symmetries which are broken down at the mean-field level must therefore be restored. The efficiency of theoretical approaches in the treatment of finite-size quantum systems can therefore be studied via their ability to restore spontaneously broken symmetries. In this thesis, a zero-dimensional $O(N)$ model is taken as a theoretical laboratory to perform such an investigation with many state-of-the-art path-integral techniques: perturbation theory combined with various resummation methods (Padé-Borel, Borel-hypergeometric, conformal mapping), enhanced versions of perturbation theory (transseries derived via Lefschetz thimbles, optimized perturbation theory), self-consistent perturbation theory based on effective actions (auxiliary field loop expansion (LOAF), Cornwall-Jackiw-Tomboulis (CJT) formalism, 4PPI effective action, ...), functional renormalization group (FRG) techniques (FRG based on the Wetterich equation, DFT-FRG, 2PI-FRG). Connections between these different techniques are also emphasized. In addition, the path-integral formalism provides us with the possibility to introduce collective degrees of freedom in an exact fashion via Hubbard-Stratonovich transformations: the effect of such transformations on the aforementioned methods is also examined in detail.
The core of this thesis is the path-integral formulation of quantum field theory and its ability to describe strongly-coupled quantum many-body systems of finite size. Collective behaviors can be efficiently described in such systems through the implementation of spontaneous symmetry breaking (SSB) in mean-field approaches. However, as the thermodynamic limit does not make sense in finite-size systems, the latter can not exhibit any SSB and the symmetries which are broken down at the mean-field level must therefore be restored. The efficiency of theoretical approaches in the treatment of finite-size quantum systems can therefore be studied via their ability to restore spontaneously broken symmetries. In this thesis, a zero-dimensional O(N) model is taken as a theoretical laboratory to perform such an investigation with many state-of-the-art path-integral techniques: perturbation theory combined with various resummation methods (Padé-Borel, Borel-hypergeometric, conformal mapping), enhanced versions of perturbation theory (transseries derived via Lefschetz thimbles, optimized perturbation theory), self-consistent perturbation theory based on effective actions (auxiliary field loop expansion (LOAF), Cornwall-Jackiw-Tomboulis (CJT) formalism, 4PPI effective action, ...), functional renormalization group (FRG) techniques (FRG based on the Wetterich equation, DFT-FRG, 2PI-FRG). Connections between these different techniques are also emphasized. In addition, the path-integral formalism provides us with the possibility to introduce collective degrees of freedom in an exact fashion via Hubbard-Stratonovich transformations: the effect of such transformations on the aforementioned methods is also examined in detail.
Strongly correlated electron systems host a plethora of fascinating physical phenomena and pose formidable challenges in their theoretical analysis. The challenges originate from the inherent complexity of the quantum many-body problem - no classical computer will ever be able to fully simulate these systems - and the lack of an effective single-particle picture, as the strong mutual interactions make it impossible to regard the electrons as independent from each other. As a consequence, most systems of correlated electrons can only be tackled approximately and numerically. In this thesis, we develop a set of numerical methods for strongly correlated electrons, which are inspired by the renormalization group (RG) idea of including degrees of freedom successively from high to low energies. This enables an efficient organization of the diverse fluctuations and is key for an accurate treatment of interacting quantum systems, where collective behavior and composite objects emerge at energy scales far below those of the microscopic constituents. In a first part, we consider the functional renormalization group (fRG), a versatile framework to study the flow of correlation functions upon modulating the underlying action. Though widely used, it has often acted more as a qualitative rather than quantitative method, due a nontransparent approximation induced by truncating the hierarchy of flow equations. We develop an iterative multiloop fRG (mfRG) scheme, which ameliorates this approximation and eliminates many of the drawbacks of fRG experienced hitherto. In particular, it restores the independence of results on the choice of RG regulator and establishes a rigorous relation to the parquet formalism. Furthermore, we show how to derive the flow equations directly from self-consistent many-body relations. This establishes a form of diagrammatic resummations at the two-particle level which circumvents ill-behaved two-particle-irreducible vertices. An application to the prototypical two-dimensional Hubbard model illustrates how our multiloop scheme elevates the fRG approach to correlated electron systems to a quantitative level. Secondly, we employ the numerical renormalization group (NRG), based on the iterative diagonalization of impurity Hamiltonians, in conjunction with the dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) to describe local correlations in multiorbital systems. Having access to arbitrarily low temperatures and energies, NRG is a unique, real-frequency impurity solver for DMFT. It has been pivotal to the understanding of Hund metals, where strong correlations arise from Hund's rules even at moderate Coulomb repulsion. Building on recent methodological advances, we extend the range of application of DMFT+NRG from orbital-degenerate models to more realistic setups: We first study orbital differentiation in a three-orbital Hund-metal model and unravel key effects of the orbital-selective Mott transition. In a real-materials setting, we then incorporate the bandstructure from density functional theory (DFT) and analyze the archetypal Hund-metal material Sr2RuO4. We particularly follow its RG flow to the Fermi-liquid regime at previously inaccessible low temperatures and generally present DFT+DMFT+NRG as a new computational paradigm for strongly correlated materials. As a side project of our fRG work, we develop an algorithm to count Feynman diagrams from closed many-body relations, which reveals the surprising outcome that totally irreducible contributions are responsible for the factorial growth in the number of diagrams. Additionally, we use NRG to study transport through three-level quantum dots and provide benchmark data for other RG methods, which aim at further describing these systems in nonequilibrium.
This thesis investigates the physics of strongly interacting driven–dissipative bosonic systems in one dimension, combining field-theoretical approaches with various numerical simulation techniques. While weakly interacting condensates are accurately described by a generalized Gross–Pitaevskii equation, the strongly correlated regime of the same microscopic models remains far less understood, particularly out of equilibrium. This thesis aims to bridge this gap by developing controlled quantum-many-body simulations for open systems governed by Lindblad dynamics, as well as investigating the corresponding action under the functional renormalization group.In the first part, we formulate a field-theoretical description of driven–dissipative one-dimen-sional bosons using the Schwinger–Keldysh formalism and the functional renormalization group (fRG).Two models are analyzed: (i) a driven-dissipative condensate whose phase dynamics is expected to exhibit emergent Kardar–Parisi–Zhang (KPZ) behavior, for which we search the emergent KPZ fixed point starting from the bosonic field theory; and (ii) a two-photon–driven system with two-body losses realizing dissipative cat qubits. For the latter, we determine the phase diagram and identify a continuous phase transition between symmetry-broken and symmetric phases, which motivates the construction of an fRG Ansatz capturing this critical behavior.The second part of the thesis focuses on the open system dynamics using exact diagonalization and tensor-network methods. For the Bose–Hubbard model with incoherent pump and loss, we characterize the steady state, and study spectral functions across the full parameter space. We show that key ground-state features are absent under dissipation, while the high-temperature unitary spectrum captures aspects of the open-system dynamics. In an extended model with additional two-body and non-local losses, we establish the semi-classical emergence of KPZ scaling and extract the KPZ dynamical exponent from the spectral function. A finite-size analysis exposes the current limitations of the tensor-network methods for reaching the high occupancy regime in the full quantum evolution.Finally, a last project develops a two-loop perturbative RG analysis of a spin-1 chain at its continuous symmetry breaking quantum critical point, revealing critical exponents distinct from the Ising universality class.Together, these results advance the understanding of strongly interacting open quantum systems, elucidating their symmetries, effective field theories, and dynamical properties, and outlining key directions for future theoretical and numerical work.
This thesis is dedicated to the derivation and benchmarking of self-consistent numerical methods that can be applied to interacting bosonic lattice models. The central goal is to derive methods with low numerical complexity but high accuracy, to be applied to complex systems which are out-of reach for established methods such as path integral quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) or the density matrix renormalization group. In the first part we derive the self-energy functional theory (SFT) for bosons. Building upon previous works on lattice systems without U(1)-symmetry-breaking, we systematically extend SFT to the possibility of a broken U(1)-symmetry and the presence of disorder. SFT incorporates bosonic dynamical mean-field theory as a certain limit, and represents a general non-perturbative framework, enabling the construction of diagrammatically sound approximations in the thermodynamical limit that are controlled in the number of optimization parameters. Using just three variational parameters, we are able to study the Bose-Hubbard model both in its clean version and in the presence of local disorder, showing excellent agreement with numerically exact QMC results. We systematically analyze the corresponding spectral functions, which cannot be fully captured by QMC. In particular, we find that in the presence of disorder the phase transition from the Bose glass to the superfluid phase at strong interactions is driven by the percolation of superfluid lakes which form around doubly occupied sites, leading to a small condensate fraction over a strongly-localized background. The second part is dedicated to the derivation of reciprocal cluster mean-field theory (RCMF) and its application to the strongly-interacting Harper-Hofstadter-Mott model (HHMm). In RCMF the full lattice in the thermodynamical limit is projected onto finite-size clusters, which are decoupled in reciprocal space through a mean-field decoupling approximation, crucially preserving the symmetries of the non-interacting dispersion. The resulting groundstate phase diagram of the HHMm exhibits band insulating, striped superfluid, and supersolid phases. Furthermore, we observe gapless uncondensed liquid phases at integer fillings, and a metastable competing fractional quantum Hall (fQH) phase. The fQH phase, predicted as the groundstate by other methods, is most likely underestimated by RCMF. We then show how a quasi-one-dimensional geometry stabilizes gapped topologically non-trivial groundstates in the HHMm. We observe quasi-one-dimensional analogues of fQH phases at fillings 1/2 and 3/2, and unconventional gapped non-degenerate groundstates at integer filling with quantized Hall responses. By systematically comparing results computed with RCMF and exact diagonalization (ED), we are able to give conclusive quantitative answers on the phase boundaries of the system, as the two methods approach the thermodynamical limit from opposite sides, since RCMF favours gapless and ED gapped phases.
This thesis aims at developing new schemes for the treatment of correlation effects in condensed matter systems using quantum field theoretical approaches. In particular, our goal is to extend the description of correlation physics at the two-particle level. This is necessary for an unbiased treatment of condensed matter systems that exhibit electronic correlations and competing ordering tendencies. In this respect, the functional renormalization group (fRG) approaches have surely contributed substantially over the last years, as they account for all scattering channels and their mutual feedback effects in an unbiased way. In spite of its flexibility, the application of the fRG is limited by its inherent perturbative nature. To go beyond the conventional weak-coupling implementations, we discuss the general idea to extend fRG based computational schemes by using an exactly solvable interacting reference problem as starting point for the RG flow. The systematic expansion around this solution accounts for a non-perturbative inclusion of correlations at both, the one-particle (self-energy) and two-particle (vertex functions) level. The full treatment of the two-particle vertex functions, however, poses a huge limitation to the numerical performance, not only in the fRG, but in several forefront many-body algorithms. In this perspective, we provide a detailed diagrammatic analysis of the frequency and momentum structures of the vertex functions, together with their physical interpretation. This constitutes the basis for sophisticated parametrization schemes. We then explain the technical details necessary for cutting-edge numerical implementations, and further benchmark our ideas using refined implementations of both, the fRG and the parquet approximation (PA).
The functional renormalization group provides a nonperturbative and systematically improvable route to constructing density functionals for quantum many-body systems from microscopic Hamiltonians. Here we advance this program by benchmarking functional-renormalization-group density functional theory (FRG-DFT) against the exact thermodynamics of the single-site Bose-Hubbard model. This model provides an ideal testing ground because it is analytically solvable, yet remains subtle in the imaginary-time coherent-state path integral, where a naive continuum treatment generates a spurious self-interaction. We show that a careful Hubbard-Stratonovich derivation identifies the self-interaction correction term that must be included in the FRG-DFT flow to recover the exact thermodynamics. We then systematically compare several closures of the resulting hierarchy of flow equations for the free energy, chemical potential, and connected density correlators over broad ranges of density, temperature, and interaction strength. The benchmark shows that the free energy is comparatively robust, whereas the chemical potential and fluctuation observables provide much sharper diagnostics of the hierarchy closure. A maximum-entropy closure gives the most accurate overall description and reproduces even the low-temperature oscillatory structure of the connected two-density correlator. These results identify two general requirements for functional approaches to quantum thermodynamics: the renormalization group flow equation must retain the equal-time contact subtraction to avoid spurious self-interactions, and any closure of the hierarchy must preserve the statistical consistency of density correlators. This work provides a controlled foundation for deriving ab initio density functionals for quantum many-body systems across condensed-matter, ultracold-atom, and nuclear physics, as well as quantum chemistry.
Abstract This chapter presents a short review of path integrals in quantum mechanics. This is followed by a detailed discussion of the evaluation of the semi-classical propagator, involving quadratic expansions of the action and the calculation of determinants. The concept of functionals is introduced for multi-dimensional cases, using a system linearly coupled to many oscillators as an example. The use of path integrals in statistical mechanics is described and quantum corrections to the classical limit are obtained. The connection with Green functions and level density is presented, with an excursion to periodic orbit theory and to the Gutzwiller formula for the oscillating part of the single particle level density. Many-body systems with separable interactions are treated by the Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation. For quantum corrections to the partition function, the static- and perturbed static path approximations are developed. The breakdown for unstable modes is discussed and a possible extension to damped motion is sketched.