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Proceedings of the Physical Society

The Collective Treatment of Many-body Systems: III

T. F. GASKELL

Published Nov 1, 1962• 53 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In a previous paper a trial wave function of the form ψ = D II i<i f ( x ij ) was used variationally to calculate the ground-state energy of an interacting electron gas, D being a determinant of plane waves and f ( x ij ) a correlation function. In this work attention is focused on the nature of the wave function; in particular, the correlation function f ( x ij ) and the pair distribution function are calculated and numerical results are presented for two widely different densities. In the course of this work, further light is thrown on the approximations made in the earlier energy calculations. Finally, the use of a wave function of the type ψ = II i<j f ( x ij ) in the calculation of the ground-state energy of a system of charged bosons is discussed and the exact high-density result of Foldy obtained.

DOI
10.1088/0370-1328/80/5/307

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Journal of Mathematical Physics•Apr 1, 1969•0 citations
In a previous paper a trial wave function of the form ψ = D II i<i f ( x ij ) was used variationally to calculate the ground-state energy of an interacting electron gas, D being a determinant of plane waves and f ( x ij ) a correlation function. In this work attention is focused on the nature of the wave function; in particular, the correlation function f ( x ij ) and the pair distribution function are calculated and numerical results are presented for two widely different densities. In the course of this work, further light is thrown on the approximations made in the earlier energy calculations. Finally, the use of a wave function of the type ψ = II i<j f ( x ij ) in the calculation of the ground-state energy of a system of charged bosons is discussed and the exact high-density result of Foldy obtained.
The ground state energy of the free electron gas is calculated using the Rayleigh-Schrödinger variational method with the wave function ψ= D Π i<j f ( x ij ) where D is a determinant of plane waves and f ( x ij ) a correlation function. Consideration of the wave function in terms of the collective coordinates p k' the Fourier components of the density, suggests an accurate approximation for the energy integral which is then evaluated over the coordinates of the particles so that the use of subsidiary conditions is avoided. Effects omitted in the random phase approximation are included and the final results extend continuously over plasma and particle modes and should be valid in the range of densities encountered in real metals. The results agree closely with those of Nozières and Pines, and of Hubbard obtained by more elaborate methods.
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〉〈{m}_{1}{m}_{2}|A|{p}_{1}{p}_{2}〉〈m1​m2​∣A∣p1​p2​〉. Variation of this matrix in the Ritz-Rayleigh principle yields a set of integral equations of the scattering type for the matrix AAA. Hole-state energies are given self-consistently in terms of the matrix AAA, 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.
The ground-state energy of the charged Bose gas is calculated by the pair-correlation variational method of Girardeau and Arnowitt. The method is exact in the high-density limit (${r}_{s}\ensuremath{\ll}1$) and provides a variational extrapolation to intermediate densities. The leading terms of the high-density expansion, obtained by iteration of the variational integral equation, are ${u}_{0}=\ensuremath{-}0.804{{r}_{s}}^{\ensuremath{-}\frac{3}{4}}\ensuremath{-}(\frac{1}{8})\mathrm{ln}{r}_{s}+O(1)$, where u0{u}_{0}u0​ is the ground-state energy per particle in Rydbergs and rs{r}_{s}rs​ is the ratio of the mean interparticle spacing to the Bohr radius. The first term was obtained previously by Foldy, but the logarithmic term is new; it is related to screening of the long-range correlations at a distance ${r}_{0}\ensuremath{\sim}{{r}_{s}}^{\ensuremath{-}\frac{1}{2}}{\ensuremath{\rho}}^{\ensuremath{-}\frac{1}{3}}$, in analogy with the logarithmic term in the correlation energy of the electron gas. Results of numerical solutions for the intermediate-density region are presented, ranging up to rs=10{r}_{s}=10rs​=10. On the basis of a comparison with the energy calculated from the known low-density expansion, it is estimated that the transition into Wigner's electron crystal (here a boson crystal) should occur at ${r}_{s}\ensuremath{\sim}5$.
The method of correlated basis functions is used in the study of the ground-state properties of a one-dimensional system of bosons interacting through a repulsive $\ensuremath{\delta}$-function potential. Ground-state energies are determined numerically for intermediate values of the coupling constant in three steps: (1) a trial form of the radial distribution function generated by the Bijl-Dingle-Jastrow (BDJ) type of wave function is introduced to obtain approximate ground-state energies, (2) the paired-phonon analysis is applied to improve the BDJ description of the ground state, and (3) leading corrections to the improved approximate energies are evaluted from the second-order perturbation energy generated by the three-phonon vertex. The obtained energy values are found to agree closely with the exact results calculated by Lieb and Liniger.
An alternative approach to the quantum statistics of interacting particles is proposed. It consists of calculating the equilibrium thermodynamical quantities of the many-body system via the pair distribution function with the assumption that the particles interact with each other only through pair central forces. The proposed approach has some advantage over the usual treatment via the partition function in that the pair distribution function is easier to deal with than the partition function in certain circumstances particularly when the collective motion description of the system is desirable. This is because only the pair distribution function can be expressed directly in terms of the collective interaction which is closely connected with collective elementary excitation, such as a plasmon in the electron gas and a phonon in the hard-sphere Boson gas. The equation of state as well as the internal energy are obtained in the form of integrals of the pair distribution function. The close analogy between the pair distribution function and the two-body propagator, which appears in the quantum field theory, makes it possible to analyze the former by the use of Feynman diagrams identical with those usually introduced for the latter. The collective interaction, which is defined by the sum of the direct and the indirect interactions, is introduced as a particular partial sum of the perturbation series of the pair distribution function. This is used in rewriting the pair distribution function in terms of the collective interaction.It is shown that, while the simple chain approximation to the collective interaction in the electron gas is responsible for the transfer of a plasmon, the same approximation to the collective pseudo-interaction in the hard-sphere Boson system has a relation similar to that of transfer of a phonon, both cases occuring at low temperatures. The explicit calculation of the pair distribution functions for these systems at the absolute zero temperature is carried out up to the first order in the collective interaction (simple chain approximation.) These results are used to calculate the ground-state energies. For the electron gas the energy thus obtained confirms Gell-Mann-Bruckner's calculation of the correlation energy. For the hard-sphere Bosons the calculated energy reproduces the result of Lee, Huang, and Yang. The extension of the calculation to the finite temperature case is also indicated. In particular the classical Debye-Huckel equation of state for the electron gas is briefly discussed.
We extend to the N-body case previous techniques for solving three-body problems with repulsive interparticle potentials and periodic boundary conditions on each particle. For clarity, we begin with one-dimensional problems, although the techniques are not peculiar to them and can be generalized to three dimensions. We decompose the wavefunction ψ into N(N − 1)/2 parts, according to Ψ= ∑ i<j=1Nψij;from the Schrödinger equation we find a basic equation for a typical ψij. As a test of this equation, we apply it for N = 4 and the case of δ-function interactions, and solve it numerically to find close agreement between the energy per particle of a four-body system and a system of the same density in which N → ∞. The numerical results are consistent with the analytic one that Eg(∞), which is the ground-state energy per particle of the system with an infinite number of particles, is related to Eg(N), which is that energy for the N-body system of the same density, by Eg(N) = Eg(∞)[1 − (1/N)] for weak repulsion and by Eg(N) = Eg(∞)[1 − (1/N2)] for very strong repulsion. We begin a similar comparison for the three-dimensional hard-sphere case by working out the problem of two hard spheres with periodic boundary conditions over a length L2 such that the density is the same as for an N-body problem in volume V=LN3:2/L23=N/LN3. We find that we get the analog of the one-dimensional result, for which case Eg(2) = Eg(∞)/2 for N = 2. That is, we find Eg(2) = πa2h/mv, which is just one-half of the many-body theory result. We also calculate the two-body correlation function and find good agreement with the many-body one, as calculated by Lee, Huang, and Yang.