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arXiv:2303.05801

Introducing the Random Phase Approximation Theory

Giampaolo Co’

Published Mar 10, 2023• 0 citations
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Abstract

Random Phase Approximation (RPA) is the theory most commonly used to describe the excitations of many-body systems. In this article, the secular equations of the theory are obtained by using three different approaches: the equation of motion method, the Green's function perturbation theory and the time-dependent Hartree--Fock theory. Each approach emphasizes specific aspects of the theory overlooked by the other methods. Extensions of the RPA secular equations to treat the continuum part of the excitation spectrum and also the pairing between the particles composing the system are presented. Theoretical approaches which overcome the intrinsic approximations of RPA are outlined.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2303.05801

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Random Phase Approximation (RPA) is the theory most commonly used to describe the excitations of many-body systems. In this article, the secular equations of the theory are obtained by using three different approaches: the equation of motion method, the Green's function perturbation theory and the time-dependent Hartree--Fock theory. Each approach emphasizes specific aspects of the theory overlooked by the other methods. Extensions of the RPA secular equations to treat the continuum part of the excitation spectrum and also the pairing between the particles composing the system are presented. Theoretical approaches which overcome the intrinsic approximations of RPA are outlined.
Random Phase Approximation (RPA) is the theory most commonly used to describe the excitations of many-body systems. In this article, the secular equations of the theory are obtained by using three different approaches: the equation of motion method, the Green function perturbation theory and the time-dependent Hartree–Fock theory. Each approach emphasizes specific aspects of the theory overlooked by the other methods. Extensions of the RPA secular equations to treat the continuum part of the excitation spectrum and also the pairing between the particles composing the system are presented. Theoretical approaches which overcome the intrinsic approximations of RPA are outlined.
Collective excitations are one of the most common and interesting features of many-body systems. Of particular interest are those collective modes which can be interpreted in terms of vibrations. Nuclei show a large variety of such modes, both low-lying and high-lying. In particular the giant dipole resonance is due to the coherent motion of protons against neutrons. Its analogue in metal clusters is the dipole plasmon excitation, due to the oscillation of electrons against the positive ions. The Random Phase Approximation (RPA) is extensively used as a microscopic theory to study the basic properties of these collective excitations. In the derivation of RPA use is made of the Quasi Boson Approximation (QBA). It consists in replacing the expectation values in the correlated ground state with those in the uncorrelated (Hartree-Fock) one. Strictly related to QBA is the feature of RPA of predicting a harmonic spectrum. On the other hand, the existence of anharmonicities in the multiphonon spectra of nuclei and their relevance in various physical processes are well established. Overcoming QBA has represented the starting point of many attempts aiming at improving RPA. A recently developed approach in this line will be presented and discussed. A very nice property of RPA is to satisfy Energy Weighted Sum Rules (EWSR). However, some violations are present in several extensions of RPA. We will show how to cure this shortcoming.
In this article, we revisit the question of the validity of Hartree-Fock and random-phase approximations. We show that there is a connection between the two and while the RPA as it is known in much of the physics literature is of limited validity, there is a generalised sense in which the random phase approximation is of much wider applicability including to systems that do not possess Fermi surfaces. The main conclusion is that the Hartree-Fock approximation is a mean-field idea applied to the density operator, and the random-phase approximation is a mean-field idea applied to the number operator. The generalised RPA is used to compute single-particle properties such as momentum distribution and spectral functions. It is found that we have to go beyond the generalised RPA and include fluctuations in the momentum distribution in order to recover a nonzero imaginary part of the one-particle self energy, which is also explicitly computed, all this in any number of spatial dimensions and no bosonization is needed.
A self-consistent RPA method is presented for N-particle Fermi systems with two- and three-body forces. The RPA equations for the generalised 'particle-hole' and 'particle-particle' problem, respectively, are derived by minimising the mean excitation energies defined analogously to mean single-particle energies. This corresponds to the equation-of-motion method. For the generalised 'one-particle/two-particle-one-hole problem' the Green-function scheme is used in order to establish a connection between two possible ways of treating the problem. It is shown that the RPA Hamiltonians have almost the same structure as in the case of pure two-body forces, and that Rowe's general RPA equations are contained as a special case of the treatment.
This paper presents the equations-of-motion method as a useful and flexible tool in the study of nuclear spectroscopy. It is partly a review, but also it introduces a new and much more powerful equations-of-motion technique which supercedes the older linearization methods. The older methods worked with operator equations. To obtain closed expressions they had to be linearized in a rather arbitrary manner. The present approach works with the ground-state expectation of operator equations and thereby avoids all problems of linearization. Thus, like the Green's function method, the equations-of-motion method becomes potentially exact. It has many advantages over Green's function methods, however, among which are its greater compactness, simplicity, and the physical insight it yields.The method is first applied to rederive the random phase approximation (RPA) and the quasi-particle RPA (QRPA) and to show precisely what terms they neglect. It is demonstrated that some of these terms have coherent phases. A higher RPA and QRPA are then derived to include these terms. The corrections have some interesting effects: notably, there is a reduction of the effective interaction strength and a stabilization of the nucleus against sudden phase transitions. The equations-of-motion method is also used to generalize, in a very simple and natural way, the Hartree-Fock (HF) and Hartree-Bogolyubov (HB) concepts of independent particles and quasi-particles to nonsimple ground states.The equations-of-motion method is presented as a simple extension of the shell model to the treatment of excitationg of a correlated ground state. By concentrating on the quantities of direct physical interest, the complexity of workins with correlated wavefunctions is avoided.
We develop a theory of excitations in a Fermion system with large quantum fluctuations that can be described by resonance of non-orthogonal Slater determinants with different correlation structures, namely, by the resonating Hartree-Fock (HF) theory developed previously. We obtain a new approximation for excitations from time dependent small fluctuations of the resonating HF ground state in a similar manner to the time dependent HF derivation of the random phase approximation (RPA). It, therefore, is called the resonating RPA. It gives two kinds of excitations. One is the collective excitations due to secular vibrations of the orbitals in the resonating Slater determinants. These excitations are called vibrons. In contrast to the usual RPA giving only one class of vibrons arising from a Slater determinant, the resonating RPA gives many different classes of vibrons arising from different Slater determinants involved in the ground state. Another kind of excitations arises from secular vibrations of the mixing coefficients of the resonating Slater determinants. These excitations of quite a new kind are shown to correspond to the excited states in the Res HF theory due to the resonance of the Slater determinants and are called resonons. The resonating RPA gives a unified description of vibrons and resonons and their interactions. We discuss new concepts emerging from and suggested by the resonating HF-RPA theory such as resonating energy bands, destruction of long range orders by resonance, solitonic and polaronic resonons and excitons, spin waves with moving solitons and polarons and so on.