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Journal of Physics A Mathematical and General

Particles and shadows: a generalized path-integral approach to non-relativistic field theories

R Rosenfelder

Published May 21, 1994• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Luttinger and Lu(1980) have derived a variational method for representing the Yukawa interaction of bosons and fermions in non-relativistic field theories by a general potential between fermions and fictitious particles ('shadows'). In the present work, this is considerably improved by applying Jensen's inequality only once and representing the kinetic term in the path-integral average as a quantum-mechanical N-body problem using the replica technique. Various weak- and strong-coupling approximations as well as variational bounds for this term are discussed.

DOI
10.1088/0305-4470/27/10/027

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Luttinger and Lu(1980) have derived a variational method for representing the Yukawa interaction of bosons and fermions in non-relativistic field theories by a general potential between fermions and fictitious particles ('shadows'). In the present work, this is considerably improved by applying Jensen's inequality only once and representing the kinetic term in the path-integral average as a quantum-mechanical N-body problem using the replica technique. Various weak- and strong-coupling approximations as well as variational bounds for this term are discussed.
In this master thesis, a new approximation scheme to non-relativistic potential scattering is developed and discussed. The starting points are two exact path integral representations of the T-matrix, which permit the application of the Feynman-Jensen variational method. A simple Ansatz for the trial action is made, and, in both cases, the variational procedure singles out a particular one-particle classical equation of motion, given in integral form. While the first is real, in the second representation this trajectory is complex and evolves according to an effective, time dependent potential. Using a cumulant expansion, the first correction to the variational approximation is also evaluated. The high energy behavior of the approximation is investigated, and is shown to contain exactly the leading and next-to-leading order of the eikonal expansion, and parts of higher terms. Our results are then numerically tested in two particular situations where others approximations turned out to be unsatisfactory. Substantial improvements are found.
These lectures are intended for graduate students who want to acquire a working knowledge of path integral methods in a wide variety of fields in physics. In general the presentation is elementary and path integrals are developed in the usual heuristic, non-mathematical way for application in many diverse problems in quantum physics. Three main parts deal with path integrals in non-relativistic quantum mechanics, many-body physics and field theory and contain standard examples (quadratic Lagrangians, tunneling, description of bosons and fermions, quantization of gauge theories etc.) as well as specialized topics (scattering, dissipative systems, spin \& color in the path integral, lattice methods etc.). In each part simple Fortran programs which can be run on a PC, illustrate the numerical evaluation of (Euclidean) path integrals by Monte-Carlo or variational methods. Also included are the set of problems which accompanied the lectures and their solutions.
We study boson–fermion dualities in one-dimensional many-body problems of identical particles interacting only through two-body contacts. By using the path-integral formalism as well as the configuration-space approach to indistinguishable particles, we find a generalization of the boson–fermion duality between the Lieb–Liniger model and the Cheon–Shigehara model. We present an explicit construction of n-boson and n-fermion models which are dual to each other and characterized by n−1 distinct (coordinate-dependent) coupling constants. These models enjoy the spectral equivalence, the boson–fermion mapping, and the strong–weak duality. We also discuss a scale-invariant generalization of the boson–fermion duality.
We formulate a path-integral Monte Carlo algorithm for simulating lattice systems consisting of fictitious particles governed by a generalized exchange statistics. This method, initially proposed for continuum systems, introduces a continuous parameter ξξξ in the partition function that interpolates between bosonic (ξ=1ξ= 1ξ=1) and fermionic (ξ=−1ξ= -1ξ=−1) statistics. We generalize this approach to discrete lattice models and apply it to the two-dimensional Hubbard model of fictitious particles, including the Bose- and Fermi-Hubbard models as special cases. By combining reweighting and ξξξ-extrapolation techniques, we access both half-filled and doped regimes. In particular, we demonstrate that the method remains effective even in strongly correlated, doped systems where the fermion sign problem hinders conventional quantum Monte Carlo approaches. Our results validate the applicability of the fictitious particle framework on lattice models and establish it as a promising tool for sign-problem mitigation in strongly interacting fermionic systems.
In a previous paper, a quantum-mechanical formulation involving both mean fields and independent-particle fields in many-fermion systems was proposed using the path-integral technique. Then the semiclassical calculation of the energy spectra was performed, and the quantization rule was derived by applying a stationary phase approximation on the path integral. In this paper, a boson-fermion expansion is derived from our formulation using Dirac quantization. As an illustration, the Lipkin model is utilized.
The derivation of effective macroscopic theories approximating microscopic systems of interacting particles is a major question in non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. In these notes we present an approximation of systems made by many fermions interacting via inverse power law potentials in the mean-field and semiclassical regimes, reviewing the material presented at the 11th summer school "Methods and Models of Kinetic Theory" held in Pesaro in June 2022. More precisely, we focus on weakly interacting fermions whose collective effect can be approximated by an averaged potential in convolution form, and review recent mean-field techniques based on second quantization approaches. As a first step we obtain a reduced description given by the time-dependent Hartree-Fock equation. As a second step we look at longer time scales where a semiclassical description starts to be relevant and approximate the many-body dynamics with the Vlasov equation, which describes the evolution of the effective probability density of particles on the one particle phase space.