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 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−2/3 and
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.
Abstract We present a general approach to justify the random phase approximation for the homogeneous Fermi gas in three dimensions in the mean-field scaling regime. We consider a system of N fermions on a torus, interacting via a two-body repulsive potential proportional to
N−31 . In the limit $N\rightarrow \infty $ , we derive the exact leading order of the correlation energy and the bosonic elementary excitations of the system, which are consistent with the prediction of the random phase approximation in the physics literature.
Hartree–Fock theory has been justified as a mean-field approximation for fermionic systems. However, it suffers from some defects in predicting physical properties, making necessary a theory of quantum correlations. Recently, bosonization of many-body correlations has been rigorously justified as an upper bound on the correlation energy at high density with weak interactions. We review the bosonic approximation, deriving an effective Hamiltonian. We then show that for systems with Coulomb interaction this effective theory predicts collective excitations (plasmons) in accordance with the random phase approximation of Bohm and Pines, and with experimental observation.
We use our recently developed functional bosonization approach to bosonize interacting fermions in arbitrary dimension d beyond the Gaussian approximation. Even in d=1 the finite curvature of the energy dispersion at the Fermi surface gives rise to interactions between the bosons. In higher dimensions scattering processes describing momentum transfer between different patches on the Fermi surface (around-the-corner processes) are an additional source for corrections to the Gaussian approximation. We derive an explicit expression for the leading correction to the bosonized Hamiltonian and the irreducible self-energy of the bosonic propagator that takes the finite curvature as well as around-the-corner proceses into account. In the special case that around-the-corner scattering is negligible, we show that the self-energy correction to the Gaussian propagator is negligible if the dimensionless quantities (
qc/
kF)dF0 [1+
F0${]}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}1}$\ensuremath{\mu}/${\ensuremath{\nu}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\alpha}}}$\ensuremath{\Vert}\ensuremath{\partial}${\ensuremath{\nu}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\alpha}}}$/\ensuremath{\partial}\ensuremath{\mu}\ensuremath{\Vert} are small compared with unity for all patches \ensuremath{\alpha}. Here
qc is the cutoff of the interaction in wave-vector space,
kF is the Fermi wave vector, \ensuremath{\mu} is the chemical potential,
F0 is the usual dimensionless Landau interaction parameter, and ${\ensuremath{\nu}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\alpha}}}$ is the local density of states associated with patch \ensuremath{\alpha}. We also show that the well-known cancellation between vertex and self-energy corrections in one-dimensional systems, which is responsible for the fact that the random-phase approximation (RPA) for the density-density correlation function is exact in d=1, exists also in d>1, provided (1) the interaction cutoff
qc is small compared with
kF, and (2) the energy dispersion is locally linearized at the Fermi surface. Finally, we suggest a systematic method to calculate corrections to the RPA, which is based on the perturbative calculation of the irreducible bosonic self-energy arising from the non-Gaussian terms of the bosonized Hamiltonian.
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^ satisfies
V^(⋅)∣⋅∣∈ℓ1. Further, we establish the analogous upper bound for
V^(⋅)2∣⋅∣1+ε∈ℓ1, which includes the Coulomb potential
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.