This paper reviews the major steps in the development of many-body theory since the early 1950's. Very few systems permit an exact solution by selective diagram summation or by exact solution of a truncated Hamiltonian. Formal methods have usually had little success for real physical systems. Examples are all the quantum liquids such as nuclear matter, liquid He 3 , liquid He 4 , superconductors and metallic conductors. Atomic and molecular systems and finite nuclei present additional problems. Many-body theory has probably had its greatest success in the application to atomic properties and the development in recent years is reviewed.
This paper reviews the major steps in the development of many-body theory since the early 1950's. Very few systems permit an exact solution by selective diagram summation or by exact solution of a truncated Hamiltonian. Formal methods have usually had little success for real physical systems. Examples are all the quantum liquids such as nuclear matter, liquid He 3 , liquid He 4 , superconductors and metallic conductors. Atomic and molecular systems and finite nuclei present additional problems. Many-body theory has probably had its greatest success in the application to atomic properties and the development in recent years is reviewed.
There are a number of many-body systems which exhibit quantum effects on a macroscopic scale. These include liquid and crystal states of both He-3 and He-4, the electron gas, and neutron matter which probably constitutes the interior of pulsors. In addition, "nuclear matter" - a hypothetical extensive system of nucleons has been studied for the insight one may gain into the nature of finite nuclei. The theoretical studies of these systems have by now a long history, but are by no means concluded. In the last few years, significant advances have been made. This has come in part from the maturity of and gradual unification of many-body theory, in part from the development and application of powerful new expansion procedures, especially varieties of hypernetted-chain equations ( 1 ) and finally to the growing power of computer simulation methods for quantum systems. This article is intended as a review of some recent
This article is an account of the present position of theories of nuclear matter initiated some years ago mainly by Jastrow and Brueckner. Section 1 introduces the basic ideas. Section 2 discusses the variational approach. Section 3 develops methods involving partial summations in perturbation theory. The difficulties confronting the latter approach, and their partial resolution by ideas from superconductivity theory, are analysed in § 4. Much of the formalism is relevant also in the theory of individual nuclei (see for example the review by Eden 1959) and in fields other than nuclear physics (see for example The Many Body Problem, Les Houches, 1958). However, in the selection of material our criterion has been relevance for the ground state of nuclear matter.
The book reviews several theoretical, mostly exactly solvable, models for selected systems in condensed states of matter, including the solid, liquid, and disordered states, and for systems of few or many bodies, both with boson, fermion, or anyon statistics. Some attention is devoted to models for quantum liquids, including superconductors and superfluids. Open problems in relativistic fields and quantum gravity are also briefly reviewed.The book ranges almost comprehensively, but concisely, across several fields of theoretical physics of matter at various degrees of correlation and at different energy scales, with relevance to molecular, solid-state, and liquid-state physics, as well as to phase transitions, particularly for quantum liquids. Mostly exactly solvable models are presented, with attention also to their numerical approximation and, of course, to their relevance for experiments.
Lattice field theory methods, usually associated with non-perturbative studies of quantum chromodynamics, are becoming increasingly common in the calculation of ground-state and thermal properties of strongly interacting non-relativistic few- and many-body systems, blurring the interfaces between condensed matter, atomic and low-energy nuclear physics. While some of these techniques have been in use in the area of condensed matter physics for a long time, others, such as hybrid Monte Carlo and improved effective actions, have only recently found their way across areas. With this topical review, we aim to provide a modest overview and a status update on a few notable recent developments. For the sake of brevity we focus on zero-temperature, non-relativistic problems. After a short introduction, we lay out some general considerations and proceed to discuss sampling algorithms, observables, and systematic effects. We show selected results on ground- and excited-state properties of fermions in the limit of unitarity. The appendix contains details on group theory on the lattice.
A modern, graduate-level introduction to many-body physics in condensed matter, this textbook explains the tools and concepts needed for a research-level understanding of the correlated behavior of quantum fluids. Starting with an operator-based introduction to the quantum field theory of many-body physics, this textbook presents the Feynman diagram approach, Green's functions and finite-temperature many-body physics before developing the path integral approach to interacting systems. Special chapters are devoted to the concepts of Fermi liquid theory, broken symmetry, conduction in disordered systems, superconductivity and the physics of local-moment metals. A strong emphasis on concepts and numerous exercises make this an invaluable course book for graduate students in condensed matter physics. It will also interest students in nuclear, atomic and particle physics.
Lattice field theory methods, usually associated with non-perturbative studies of quantum chromodynamics, are becoming increasingly common in the calculation of ground-state and thermal properties of strongly interacting non-relativistic few- and many-body systems, blurring the interfaces between condensed matter, atomic and low-energy nuclear physics. While some of these techniques have been in use in the area of condensed matter physics for a long time, others, such as hybrid Monte Carlo and improved effective actions, have only recently found their way across areas. With this topical review, we aim to provide a modest overview and a status update on a few notable recent developments. For the sake of brevity we focus on zero-temperature, non-relativistic problems. After a short introduction, we lay out some general considerations and proceed to discuss sampling algorithms, observables, and systematic effects. We show selected results on ground- and excited-state properties of fermions in the limit of unitarity. The appendix contains details on group theory on the lattice.