An improved version of Hubbard's treatment of correlation in a nondegenerate narrow band is obtained by the use of a new Green's-function decoupling scheme. The resulting one-electron Green's function has two poles on the real axis corresponding to a splitting of the electron bands due to the strong correlations between electrons on the same site. This is the same result that Hubbard obtained, but in our case the poles are shifted and their positions agree with the results of Harris and Lange, who used a moment technique. The theory is applied to a simple cubic lattice with nearest-neighbor interaction, and the lattice is found to be ferromagnetic in the strongly correlated limit for a sufficiently large number of electrons per atom. An examination of the low-density limit shows that the two-pole approximation does not reduce to Kanamori's
T-matrix result, a failing which it shares with Hubbard's theory. A method is outlined for improving the theory so as to give the correct low-density result. In addition, the possibility of obtaining a minimum principle for the theory is explored.
A perturbation theory is developed for the correlation energy
Ec[n], of a finite-density system, with respect to the coupling constant \ensuremath{\alpha} which multiplies the electron-electron repulsion operator in ${\mathit{H}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\alpha}}}$=T^+\ensuremath{\alpha}V${\mathrm{^}}_{\mathit{e}\mathit{e}}$+
tsumi${\mathit{v}}_{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\alpha}}}$(
ri). The external potential ${\mathit{v}}_{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\alpha}}}$ is constrained to keep the gound-state density n fixed for all \ensuremath{\alpha}\ensuremath{\ge}0. ${\mathit{v}}_{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\alpha}}}$ is given completely in terms of functional derivatives at full charge (\ensuremath{\alpha}=1), from which
Ec[${\mathit{n}}_{\ensuremath{\lambda}}$]=
ec,2[n]+ ${\ensuremath{\lambda}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}1}$
ec,3[n]+${\ensuremath{\lambda}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}2}$
ec,4[n]+..., where each
ec,j[n] is expressed in terms of integrals involving Kohn-Sham determinants. Here, ${\mathit{n}}_{\ensuremath{\lambda}}$(x,y,x)=${\ensuremath{\lambda}}^{3}$n(\ensuremath{\lambda}x,\ensuremath{\lambda}y,\ensuremath{\lambda}z) and \ensuremath{\lambda}=${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\alpha}}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}1}$. The identification of ${\mathrm{lim}}_{\ensuremath{\lambda}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\infty}}}$
Ec[${\mathit{n}}_{\ensuremath{\lambda}}$], which is a high-density limit, as the second-order energy
ec,2[n] allows one to compute bounds upon ${\mathrm{lim}}_{\ensuremath{\lambda}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\infty}}}$
Ec[${\mathit{n}}_{\ensuremath{\lambda}}$]; the bounds imply that ${\mathrm{lim}}_{\ensuremath{\lambda}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\infty}}}$
Ec[${\mathit{n}}_{\ensuremath{\lambda}}$]\ensuremath{\simeq}
Ec[n] for a large class of small atoms and molecules, and suggest that ${\mathrm{lim}}_{\ensuremath{\lambda}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\mathrm{\ensuremath{\infty}}}$
Ec[${\mathit{n}}_{\ensuremath{\lambda}}$] should be of the same order of magnitude as
Ec[n] in finite insulators and semiconductors.Approximations to
Ec[n] should reflect all this. In contrast, perhaps the well-known overbinding of the local-density approximation (LDA) in molecules and solids is due, in part, to the fact that the LDA correlation energy is too sensitive to a coordinate scaling of n. Indeed, the LDA for
Ec[${\mathit{n}}_{\ensuremath{\lambda}}$] diverges when \ensuremath{\lambda}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty} because of the presence of the -ln(\ensuremath{\lambda}) term in the Gell-Mann and Brueckner high-density expression for the correlation energy, per particle, of a homogeneous density, which is infinite. In a sense, the derived perturbation expansion transforms the Gell-Mann and Brueckner expression into one that applies specifically to an inhomogeneous density which integrates to a finite number of electrons.
In a large variety of systems, like the high‐temperature superconductors, the dominant parameter of the system is the on‐site Coulomb repulsion that becomes comparable with the kinetic energy in the vicinity of the metal‐insulator transition. This implies that perturbation expansions must include this interaction in the zeroth order Hamiltonian and treat the hopping term as a perturbation. Thus, one gets a situation radically different from the usual one in which the particles are initially free and needs to develop a nonstandard perturbation theory based on a cumulant expansion. In this paper, we revisit the general formalism of the cumulant expansion approach for the single band and two‐band Hubbard model, being interested in introducing a systematic way to perform approximations which take into account cooperative phenomena. As an example we analyze the effect of the charge fluctuations on the single‐particle spectral properties.