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arXiv:2405.01386 · Journal of the American Mathematical Society

The correlation energy of the electron gas in the mean-field regime

Martin Ravn Christiansen, Christian Hainzl, Phan Thành Nam

Published May 27, 2026• 1 citation
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Abstract

We prove a rigorous lower bound on the correlation energy of interacting fermions in the mean-field regime for a wide class of singular interactions, including the Coulomb potential. Combined with the upper bound obtained by Christiansen, Hainzl, and Nam [Comm. Math. Phys. 401 (2023), pp. 1469–1529], our result establishes an analogue of the Gell-Mann–Brueckner formula c 1 ρ log ⁡ ( ρ ) + c 2 ρ c_{1}\rho \log \left (\rho \right )+c_{2}\rho for the correlation energy of the electron gas in the high-density limit. Moreover, our analysis allows us to go beyond mean-field scaling while still covering the same class of potentials.

DOI
10.1090/jams/1080

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We prove a rigorous lower bound on the correlation energy of interacting fermions in the mean-field regime for a wide class of singular interactions, including the Coulomb potential. Combined with the upper bound obtained by Christiansen, Hainzl, and Nam [Comm. Math. Phys. 401 (2023), pp. 1469–1529], our result establishes an analogue of the Gell-Mann–Brueckner formula c 1 ρ log ⁡ ( ρ ) + c 2 ρ c_{1}\rho \log \left (\rho \right )+c_{2}\rho for the correlation energy of the electron gas in the high-density limit. Moreover, our analysis allows us to go beyond mean-field scaling while still covering the same class of potentials.
Abstract We prove a rigorous upper bound on the correlation energy of interacting fermions in the mean-field regime for a wide class of interaction potentials. Our result covers the Coulomb potential, and in this case we obtain the analogue of the Gell-Mann–Brueckner formula c1ρlog⁡(ρ)+c2ρc_{1}\rho \log \left( \rho \right) +c_{2}\rho c1​ρlog(ρ)+c2​ρ c 1 ρ log ρ + c 2 ρ in the high density limit. We do this by refining the analysis of our bosonization method to deal with singular potentials, and to capture the exchange contribution which is absent in the purely bosonic picture.
In this paper, based on [N. Benedikter, P. T. Nam, M. Porta, B. Schlein and R. Seiringer. Optimal upper bound for the correlation energy of a Fermi gas in the mean-field regime, Commun. Math. Phys. 374(3) (2020) 2097–2150; N. Benedikter, P. T. Nam, M. Porta, B. Schlein and R. Seiringer, Correlation energy of a weakly interacting Fermi gas, Invent. Math. 225(3) (2021) 885–979; N. Benedikter, M. Porta, B. Schlein and R. Seiringer, Correlation energy of a weakly interacting Fermi gas with large interaction potential, preprint (2021), arXiv:2106.13185], we present a recent estimate for the correlation energy of a Fermi gas in the so-called mean-field regime and we outline some of the main ideas of its proof.
We rigorously establish a formula for the correlation energy of a two-dimensional Fermi gas in the mean-field regime for potentials whose Fourier transform V^\hat{V}V^ satisfies V^(⋅)∣⋅∣∈ℓ1\hat{V}(\cdot) | \cdot | \in \ell^1V^(⋅)∣⋅∣∈ℓ1. Further, we establish the analogous upper bound for V^(⋅)2∣⋅∣1+ε∈ℓ1\hat{V}(\cdot)^2 | \cdot |^{1 + \varepsilon} \in \ell^1V^(⋅)2∣⋅∣1+ε∈ℓ1, which includes the Coulomb potential V^(k)∼∣k∣−2\hat{V}(k) \sim |k|^{-2}V^(k)∼∣k∣−2. The proof is based on an approximate bosonization using slowly growing patches around the Fermi surface. In contrast to recent proofs in the three-dimensional case, we need a refined analysis of low-energy excitations, as they are less numerous, but carry larger contributions.
While Hartree-Fock theory is well established as a fundamental approximation for interacting fermions, it has been unclear how to describe corrections to it due to many-body correlations. In this paper we start from the Hartree-Fock state given by plane waves and introduce collective particle-hole pair excitations. These pairs can be approximately described by a bosonic quadratic Hamiltonian. We use Bogoliubov theory to construct a trial state yielding a rigorous Gell-Mann-Brueckner-type upper bound to the ground state energy. Our result justifies the random-phase approximation in the mean-field scaling regime, for repulsive, regular interaction potentials.
We consider a system of N≫1N\gg 1N≫1 interacting fermionic particles in three dimensions, confined in a periodic box of volume 111, in the mean-field scaling. We assume that the interaction potential is bounded and small enough. We prove upper and lower bounds for the correlation energy, which are optimal in their NNN-dependence. Moreover, we compute the correlation energy at leading order in the interaction potential, recovering the prediction of second order perturbation theory. The proof is based on the combination of recent methods introduced in the context of fermionic many-body quantum dynamics together with a rigorous version of second-order perturbation theory, developed in the context of non-relativistic QED.
We prove that the random phase approximation provides an upper bound on the correlation energy of a three-dimensional, weakly interacting, Fermi gas in the thermodynamic limit at high density. More precisely, we consider a mean-field scaling regime where the kinetic and interaction Hamiltonian are scaled by ρ−2/3ρ^{-2/3}ρ−2/3 and ρ−1ρ^{-1}ρ−1, respectively. We use a correlated trial state constructed through a quasi-bosonic Bogoliubov transformation of collective particle--hole excitations associated to patches on the Fermi surface. Key of the proof is to control the position-space localization of the collective excitations. Combined with an iterated Duhamel expansion of the expectation values of (localized) particle number operators we obtain extensive estimates, which justify the reduction to an effective quadratic Hamiltonian and its approximate diagonalization.