A variational principle is formulated to determine the single-particle states, their pairing, and the occupation number distribution for a trial state vector of the Bardeen, Cooper, Schrieffer type. The equations which are derived generalize those of the Hartree-Fock method obtained with a Slater determinant trial wave function. It is pointed out that in a suitable representation the vacuum state of a general quasi-particle transformation has such a trial form which exhibits directly the pairing of single-particle states. Another variational principle determines the excitation energies.Two coupling cases are distinguished: the commutative case in which the self-consistent densities and energies are related to quantities which all commute, and the more general noncommutative case. The latter is of importance in critical-field phenomena. The equations for the commutative case can be written in a matrix form which retains its validity in the more general noncommutative case. The simple matrix commutator equations appear as direct generalizations of the density matrix form of the Hartree-Fock equations.The equations for small oscillations have an equally simple form. Their connection with a diagonal representation of the quasi-particle energies is exhibited in a way which remains valid in the general coupling case. The "unphysical" solutions are excluded by the supplementary condition. The contact with the Green's function approach is established. The generalized matrix form of the Green's function equations shows especially clearly the symmetry properties of the method.
A variational principle is formulated to determine the single-particle states, their pairing, and the occupation number distribution for a trial state vector of the Bardeen, Cooper, Schrieffer type. The equations which are derived generalize those of the Hartree-Fock method obtained with a Slater determinant trial wave function. It is pointed out that in a suitable representation the vacuum state of a general quasi-particle transformation has such a trial form which exhibits directly the pairing of single-particle states. Another variational principle determines the excitation energies.Two coupling cases are distinguished: the commutative case in which the self-consistent densities and energies are related to quantities which all commute, and the more general noncommutative case. The latter is of importance in critical-field phenomena. The equations for the commutative case can be written in a matrix form which retains its validity in the more general noncommutative case. The simple matrix commutator equations appear as direct generalizations of the density matrix form of the Hartree-Fock equations.The equations for small oscillations have an equally simple form. Their connection with a diagonal representation of the quasi-particle energies is exhibited in a way which remains valid in the general coupling case. The "unphysical" solutions are excluded by the supplementary condition. The contact with the Green's function approach is established. The generalized matrix form of the Green's function equations shows especially clearly the symmetry properties of the method.
The time-dependent Hartree-Fock equations are derived from a variational principle for the general N-body action of a Slater determinant of single-electron orbitals. The variational principle generalizes commonly used variational treatments based on reduced two-body actions. The self-consistent field equations are found to contain time-dependent corrections to the standard mean-field interactions. Their physical significance is discussed and a time-dependent phase shift to the Slater determinant is obtained that properly accounts for the total interaction energy in the mean-field approach.
The method of superposition of configurations, which provides a general solution of the quantum-mechanical many-particle problem (for fermions), is reformulated so that equations may be compared with those used in the Brueckner theory. Important differences occur in application to finite or nonuniform systems for which the Hartree-Fock or Brueckner self-consistent orbitals are not plane waves. In such cases nonvanishing single-particle matrix elements occur which cannot be described by the Brueckner formalism based on a two-particle operator. Equations for an effective two-particle operator, equivalent to the variational equations of the method of superposition of configurations, are derived for a basis of Hartree-Fock orbitals. At the expense of making the orbital basis dependent upon the effective two-particle operator, the orbital basis can be determined by a condition which is essentially that of the Brueckner method. This condition removes a class of matrix elements which do not necessarily vanish in the Hartree-Fock basis although they would be neglected to second order in a perturbation calculation starting from the Hartree-Fock wave function. The equations for the effective two-particle operator are formally the same in both cases but lead to different operators because of the different choice of basis. In neither case can the equations be written in terms of products of such operators, a formalism assumed in the Brueckner theory. It is shown that the Brueckner condition is not equivalent to the condition which would determine the best possible orbital basis for the form of wave function implied by the use of an effective operator dependent on two particles only. The argument of the present paper is limited to systems with a finite number of particles, since the variational principle used here is not applicable without modification to systems with an infinite number of particles.
The general form of the energy of the ground state of a many-fermion system is shown to be exactly of the form proposed by Brueckner and Bethe, without approximation. In a variational treatment, if the trial wave function is picked containing only pair correlations, together with all possible unlinked pairs, it is described by a two-body excitation matrix 〈m1m2∣A∣p1p2〉. Variation of this matrix in the Ritz-Rayleigh principle yields a set of integral equations of the scattering type for the matrix A. Hole-state energies are given self-consistently in terms of the matrix A, but particle-state energies are Hartree-Fock energies. This may be corrected for by widely enlarging the class of terms admitted into the wave function. If the approximation is then made of omitting a class of terms, defined as cross-linked clusters in $〈\ensuremath{\psi}|H|\ensuremath{\psi}〉$, the particle-state energies are easily renormalized. Variation then leads to an infinite hierarchy of integral equations.
A finite many-particle system can have collective states for which the off-diagonal matrix elements of certain one-particle operators are of the same order of magnitude as the diagonal elements. In such cases it is suggested that the random-phase approximation is in need of generalization. Examples are the uniform translational motion of any system and the rotational motion of deformed nuclei. The generalization is suggested after a review and critical analysis of the Hartree-Fock approximation. The model single-particle wave functions of the latter are replaced by wave functions in a space labeled both by the particle variables and by the quantum numbers of the collective motion. These generalized amplitudes are defined field-theoretically, and a self-consistent scheme for their calculation is obtained from the equations of motion. In addition to the self-consistent potential defined in the enlarged space, the energies of the excited states also turn out to be given by a natural self-consistency requirement. The new calculational scheme is first applied to a systematic restudy of the random-phase approximation where the self-consistency requirement on the energies has previously been overlooked. As a first characteristic application we obtain without "pushing" the total mass of a system in uniform translation, and a reinterpretation of the Hartree-Fock average field.
To avoid confusion, it is necessary to be quite explicit about what is assumed and what is to be proved. A. Klein, Phys. Rev. 121, 950 (1961) Summary The topic of this chapter is functionals that provide a concise formulation for thermodynamic quantities and Green's function methods in interacting many-body systems. Building upon the instructive examples of density functional theory and the Hartree– Fock approximation, functionals of the Green's function are developed to provide a framework for practical methods used extensively in many-body perturbation theory (Chs. 9–15), dynamical mean-field theory (Chs. 16–20), and their combination in Ch. 21. Functional concepts give a firm foundation for those methods, for example, they give the conditions for approximations to obey conservation laws. Additional background and specific aspects are in App. H. Many physical quantities can be expressed as functionals , i.e., they depend on an entire function.1 For example, in the quantum variational method to determine a wavefunction, the total energy of a system of many electrons is a functional of a many-body trial wavefunction ( r 1 , r 2 , …): it is the expectation value of the hamiltonian. At the variational minimum, assuming the trial wavefunction is completely flexible, one finds the many-body Schrödinger equation for the ground state. Many of the properties we are interested in are, formally, simple functionals of the ground- or excited-state wavefunctions. In the search for feasible ways to calculate properties such as excitation spectra, we are led to different types of functional. The idea is to deal only with a physical, measurable quantity Q of interest and a variational functional E [ Q ] of this quantity. The variational character of E allows one to derive equations that determine Q 0 , the value of Q for the system in a desired state, typically the ground state or equilibrium state at T ≠ 0. Other properties should be different functionals F m [ Q ] that can then be evaluated at Q = Q 0 . This strategy is outlined in Fig. 8.1. To appreciate the power of such approaches, one can consider the impact of density functional theory, which is formulated as a functional of the density n ( r ) of electrons; it is defined for a range of densities and the variational minimum for the energy functional E [ n ] leads to equations to determine the actual ground-state density n 0 ( r ) and total energy E 0 .
A density-matrix formalism is developed based on the one-particle density-matrix of a single-determinantal reference state. Unlike traditional density-functional-theory approaches, the v-representable problem does not appear in the proposed method, nor the need to introduce functionals defined by a constrained search. The correlation-energy functionals are nonuniversal, in the sense that they depend on the external potential. Nevertheless, model systems can still be used to derive universal energy functionals. Variational and nonvariational energy functionals are introduced that yield the target-state energy when the reference state---or its corresponding one-particle density matrix---is constructed from Brueckner orbitals. Nonvariational energy functionals yield generalized Hartree-Fock equations involving a nonlocal correlation potential and the Hartree-Fock exchange operator; these equations are obtained by imposing the Brillouin-Brueckner condition. The same equations---for the most part---are obtained from variational energy functionals using functional minimization, yielding the (kernel of the) correlation potential as the functional derivative of correlation-energy functionals. Approximations for the correlation-energy functions are introduced, including a one-particle-density-matrix variant of the local-density approximation, a variant of the Colle-Salvetti functional, and a linear combination of the two that is a variant of the correlation-energy functional within the hybrid, three-parameter, Becke-Lee-Yang-Parr density functional (B3LYP).