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arXiv:2507.12390

Derivation of the time-dependent Hartree equations for strongly interacting dense fermionic systems

Duc Viet Hoang, David Mitrouskas, Peter Pickl

Published Jul 16, 2025• 0 citations
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Abstract

The time-dependent Hartree and Hartree-Fock equations provide effective mean-field descriptions for the dynamics of large fermionic systems and play a fundamental role in many areas of physics. In this work, we rigorously derive the time-dependent Hartree equations as the large-$N$ limit of the microscopic Schrödinger dynamics of $N$ fermions confined to a volume of order one and interacting via strong pair potentials. A central step in our analysis is the implementation of time-dependent gauge transformations, which eliminate the dominant contribution from the interaction potential in both the Schrödinger and Hartree evolutions.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2507.12390

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The time-dependent Hartree and Hartree-Fock equations provide effective mean-field descriptions for the dynamics of large fermionic systems and play a fundamental role in many areas of physics. In this work, we rigorously derive the time-dependent Hartree equations as the large-NNN limit of the microscopic Schrödinger dynamics of NNN fermions confined to a volume of order one and interacting via strong pair potentials. A central step in our analysis is the implementation of time-dependent gauge transformations, which eliminate the dominant contribution from the interaction potential in both the Schrödinger and Hartree evolutions.
We introduce a new method for deriving the time-dependent Hartree or Hartree-Fock equations as an effective mean-field dynamics from the microscopic Schrödinger equation for fermionic many-particle systems in quantum mechanics. The method is an adaption of the method used in Pickl (Lett. Math. Phys. 97 (2) 151–164 2011 ) for bosonic systems to fermionic systems. It is based on a Gronwall type estimate for a suitable measure of distance between the microscopic solution and an antisymmetrized product state. We use this method to treat a new mean-field limit for fermions with long-range interactions in a large volume. Some of our results hold for singular attractive or repulsive interactions. We can also treat Coulomb interaction assuming either a mild singularity cutoff or certain regularity conditions on the solutions to the Hartree(-Fock) equations. In the considered limit, the kinetic and interaction energy are of the same order, while the average force is subleading. For some interactions, we prove that the Hartree(-Fock) dynamics is a more accurate approximation than a simpler dynamics that one would expect from the subleading force. With our method we also treat the mean-field limit coupled to a semiclassical limit, which was discussed in the literature before, and we recover some of the previous results. All results hold for initial data close (but not necessarily equal) to antisymmetrized product states and we always provide explicit rates of convergence.
According to a theory of H. Spohn, the time-dependent Hartree (TDH) equation governs the 1-particle state in N -particle systems whose dynamics are prescribed by a non-relativistic Schrödinger equation with 2-particle interactions, in the limit N tends to infinity while the strength of the 2-particle interaction potential is scaled by 1/N .In previous work we have considered the same mean field scaling for systems of fermions, and established that the error of the time-dependent Hartree-Fock (TDHF) approximation tends to 0 as N tends to infinity.In this article we extend our results to systems of fermions with m-particle interactions (m > 2).
This thesis is about the derivation of effective mean field equations and their next-order corrections starting from nonrelativistic many-body quantum theory. Mean field equations provide an approximate ansatz for the description of interacting many-particle systems. In this ansatz the interaction between the particles is replaced by a self-consistent external potential leading to an effective one-body description of the many-particle system. Next-order corrections provide an approximation which goes one step further and tries to capture also subleading effects that are not resolved by the mean field ansatz. We present mathematical proofs for the validity of such effective theories for different models that are motivated, e.g., from the theory of ultracold atoms (the bosonic Hartree equation and the corresponding Bogoliubov theory) and from plasma physics (the motion of a tracer particle through a degenerate and dense electron gas). Starting from a many-body Schrödinger equation, our goal is to show that the solutions converge in a particular limit to the solutions to an effective mean field equation and its next-order corrections. After a short introduction and a summary in Chapter one, we present the main part of this work in three self-contained chapters. In Chapter two we analyze the dynamics of a large number N of nonrelativistic bosons in the weak coupling limit, i.e., for a coupling constant g_N=1/N. It is well known that in the limit of infinite particle number, the Hartree equation emerges as an effective one-particle theory of the Bose gas. This is closely related to the remarkable physical phenomenon of Bose-Einstein condensation at low temperature, namely that the majority of particles in a Bose gas occupies the same copy of a single one-particle quantum state. Our emphasis lies in the description of the few particles that fluctuate around the Bose-Einstein condensate. We show convergence of the fully interacting dynamics to an auxiliary time evolution in the norm of the N-particle space. This result allows us to prove several other assertions. Among other things, it is used to derive the Hartree equation with optimal speed of convergence 1/N for initial states that are close to ground states of interacting systems and also to prove convergence of the N-particle solution towards a time evolution obtained from the Bogoliubov Hamiltonian on Fock space. Chapter three is about the low energy properties of the weakly interacting homogeneous Bose gas. Here, we derive a novel estimate for low energy eigenfunctions stating that the probability for finding lll particles out of their total number N not in the condensate is exponentially small in the number lll. Using this bound, we then prove that the ground state wave function of the microscopic model satisfies certain quasifree type properties. The exponential decay is moreover used to provide an alternative proof for the validity of Bogoliubov's approximation for the low-lying energy eigenvalues. Bogoliubov theory states that the excitation energies of the Bose gas are given by excitations of free quasiparticles obeying an effective energy-momentum dispersion relation which is linear for small momentum. The linearity of the effective dispersion relation is an essential ingredient for the explanation of the superfluid character of the Bose gas. In Chapter four we study the time evolution of a single particle coupled through a pair potential to a dense and homogeneous ideal Fermi gas in two spatial dimensions. This type of model is well known in plasma physics where it is used to describe the energy loss of ions moving through a dense and degenerate electron gas. We analyze the model for a coupling parameter g=1 and prove closeness of the time evolution to an effective dynamics for large densities of the gas and for long time scales of the order of some power of the density. The effective dynamics is generated by the free Hamiltonian with a large but constant energy shift. To leading order, this energy shift is given by the spatially homogeneous mean field potential produced by the gas particles, whereas at next-to-leading order, one has to consider an additional correction to the mean field energy which is due to so-called recollision processes.
We study the quantum dynamics of a large number of interacting fermionic particles in a constant magnetic field. In a coupled mean-field and semiclassical scaling limit, we show that solutions of the many-body Schrödinger equation converge to solutions of a non-linear Hartree-Fock equation. The central ingredient of the proof are certain semiclassical trace norm estimates of commutators of the position and momentum operators with the one-particle density matrix of the solution of the Hartree-Fock equation. In a first step, we prove their validity for non-interacting initial data in a magnetic field by generalizing a 2020 result of Fournais and Mikkelsen. We then propagate these bounds from the initial data along the Hartree-Fock flow to arbitrary times.