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Journal of Mathematical Physics

Linked cluster expansions in the density fluctuation formulation of the many-body problem

C. E. Campbell

Published May 1, 1975• 7 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A perturbation theory is developed for the logarithm of the normalization integral (or partition function) of an N-body system which is either a Bose liquid in its ground state or a classical fluid in the canonical ensemble. The perturbation in the former is an n-body factor in the ground state wavefunction and in the latter is an n-body potential. The normalization function serves as a generating function for the cumulants (or static correlation functions) of the density fluctuation operator ρk. The expansions of the perturbed partition function and correlation functions are shown to be linked cluster expansions involving the correlation functions in the unperturbed system; each term in these expansions is manifestly of the proper order in N. Several approximations involving truncations of the cumulants and/or resummation of part of the terms in the linked cluster expansions are discussed.

DOI
10.1063/1.522662

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Physical Review•Oct 1, 1955•770 citations
A perturbation theory is developed for the logarithm of the normalization integral (or partition function) of an N-body system which is either a Bose liquid in its ground state or a classical fluid in the canonical ensemble. The perturbation in the former is an n-body factor in the ground state wavefunction and in the latter is an n-body potential. The normalization function serves as a generating function for the cumulants (or static correlation functions) of the density fluctuation operator ρk. The expansions of the perturbed partition function and correlation functions are shown to be linked cluster expansions involving the correlation functions in the unperturbed system; each term in these expansions is manifestly of the proper order in N. Several approximations involving truncations of the cumulants and/or resummation of part of the terms in the linked cluster expansions are discussed.
A linked-cluster expansion for the free energy in the petit canonical ensemble is presented and proved. It has the advantage of avoiding the introduction of the unknown chemical potential in the perturbation series. As a consequence of correlations among the population numbers n(K)n(\mathrm{K})n(K), additional linkages representing these correlations appear. The result is used to find the ground-state energy of a many-body fermion system. This expression reduces to the Brueckner-Goldstone expansion only in the case of central forces in an isotropic system, a theorem due to Kohn, Luttinger, and Ward. It is also shown that in the random phase approximation, correlation bonds do not contribute. Finally the relation of our formalism to the Bloch-De Dominicis expansion for the grand partition function is discussed.
We present in this paper a systematic nonperturbative cluster-cumulant method for deriving thermal averages of operators in quantum many-body systems. The method combines the advantages of the cumulant expansion scheme of thermodynamic perturbation theory, the approach of thermofield dynamics as a finite-temperature field theory, and the time-dependent coupled-cluster theory extended to ``imaginary time.'' We have generalized the concepts of cumulants in a nonperturbative manner and have posited on the statistical operator an exponential-like ansatz containing connected, size-extensive operators in the exponent. These latter cumulantlike operators have been termed ``cluster cumulants'' by us. For a compact treatment, we have derived an alternative thermal field theory in which a time-ordered product is expanded in terms of ``thermal normal products'' of operators and thermal contractions---leading to a ``thermal Wick's theorem.'' The thermal normal products are the finite-temperature analogs of the ordinary normal products and have zero thermal averages. Operators in these products commute (anticommute) under permutations for bosons (fermions). This thermal representation is shown to be unitarily related to the traditional thermofield dynamics formulation, but has the advantage of using only the physical variables. The imaginary-time evolution of the statistical operator is treated by our recently formulated time-dependent cluster-cumulant theory. The partition function is evaluated as an exponential of a connected quantity. As an illustrative example, we have computed the partition function of an anharmonic oscillator with equally weighted cubic and quartic perturbation for a wide range of coupling, extending to the strongly nonperturbative regime. We study the behavior of free energy in the low-temperature limit and verify numerically the validity of the Kohn-Luttinger theorem [Phys. Rev. 118, 41 (1960)] for this system. We also show that our formalism is a natural nonperturbative analog of the thermodynamic perturbative theory by showing that a perturbative solution of the thermal-cluster-cumulant equations generates a variation of the Bloch--Balian--de Dominicis theory.
In order to go over from a perturbation expansion of the grand partition function (the unlinked-cluster expansion) to an expansion of the thermodynamic potential (the linked-cluster expansion) in powers of the interaction, it is necessary to treat carefully those terms in which creation (or annihilation) operators for the same state occur twice or more. The unlinked- and linked-cluster expansions for a system of fermions are here shown to be equivalent by a direct comparison of the terms which occur in each. The relation between the two expansions is illustrated by the example of a system of fermions interacting only with a single-particle potential.
We express the logarithm of the thermal density matrix ρH,β (X,X′)≡〈X‖e−βH‖X′〉, where H=H0+V, as a cumulant expansion in powers of the perturbation V, by associating with {H0,‖X〉,‖X′〉} a stochastic process. If the ground state of H0 is isolated, this stochastic process is of finite memory; it then follows from the properties of cumulants that the above expansion of ln ρ is nonsecular as β→∞ (all its terms ∼β), and is thus usable down to zero temperature, unlike the direct expansion of ρ in powers of V, whose nth term ∼βn. To determine explicitly the low-temperature behavior, we apply an analysis familiar in the theory of relaxation, and obtain the form ln ρH,β(X,X′)=h(X,X′,β) +a(X)+a(X′)°−bβ, where a,b,h are cumulant expansions in powers of V; a(X), b are independent of β; and h(X,X′,β)→0 as β→∞. Comparing with ρ→〈X‖ψ0〉e−βE0〈ψ0‖X′〉 as β→∞, where ψ0 and E0 are the ground state and energy of H, we deduce E0=b, ln〈X‖ψ0〉=a(X), i.e., the Rayleigh–Schrödinger perturbation series for E0 and ln〈X‖ψ0〉 (with 〈ψ0‖ψ0〉=1) emerge as cumulant expansions. In the case of a many-body system, the properties of cumulants immediately imply linked cluster theorems for ln ρ, as well as for E0 and ln〈X‖ψ0〉.
The properties of a Bose system of particles with repulsive interactions have previously been treated using perturbation theory in the formalism of second quantization. Others have also considered this problem by dealing with the wave function in configuration space, using the theory of cluster expansions. In these latter papers, variation with respect to a parameter in a trial function for the ground state has been shown to yield a ground-state energy close to the exact asymptotic expressions obtained from perturbation theory. The connection between the two methods is not immediately obvious from these cluster expansion treatments. It is shown here that, as one might expect, the cluster integral method can be handled so that it is completely equivalent to the pair approximation in perturbation theory.
An approximation method developed previously to deal with many particles in strong interaction is examined in further detail. It is shown that the series giving the interaction energy is a development in a sequence of linked or irreducible cluster terms each of which gives a contribution to the energy proportional to the total number of particles. Consequently the convergence of the expansion is independent of the total number of particles. The origin of this simple feature is illustrated by showing that a similar situation exists in the expansion of standard perturbation theory. The numerical convergence of the expansion is quantitatively discussed for the nuclear problem where it is shown that the correction arising from the first cluster term involving three particles is less than the leading term by a factor of about ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}4}$. The smallness of the correction is largely a result of the action of the exclusion principle.