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Physical Review B

Quasiparticle states of electron systems out of equilibrium

Bedřich Velicky´, Anděla Kalvová, Václav Špička

Published May 22, 2007• 14 citations
Publisher

Abstract

In a nonequilibrium system, quasiparticles are defined, consistently with the construction of quantum transport equations, as one-electron excitations whose propagator possesses a time-local optical potential. This potential is constructed as a solution of the phase equation, a self-consistency condition reducing the renormalized Dyson equation to a formerly proposed multiplicative composition rule for the propagators. The Dyson equation for the particle correlation function is transformed to a renormalized quasiparticle reconstruction equation, whose leading term represents the quasiparticle Kadanoff-Baym ansatz [Physica E 29, 196 (2005)], an improvement over the standard generalized Kadanoff-Baym ansatz.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.75.195125

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In a nonequilibrium system, quasiparticles are defined, consistently with the construction of quantum transport equations, as one-electron excitations whose propagator possesses a time-local optical potential. This potential is constructed as a solution of the phase equation, a self-consistency condition reducing the renormalized Dyson equation to a formerly proposed multiplicative composition rule for the propagators. The Dyson equation for the particle correlation function is transformed to a renormalized quasiparticle reconstruction equation, whose leading term represents the quasiparticle Kadanoff-Baym ansatz [Physica E 29, 196 (2005)], an improvement over the standard generalized Kadanoff-Baym ansatz.
Construction of the electron quantum transport equations from Non-Equilibrium Green's Functions is presently based on Reconstruction Theorems, reducing full description of a non-equilibrium system to a dynamic theory in terms of one-particle quantities. This approach, stemming from the original Kadanoff-Baym Ansatz, and based on a suitably renormalized NGF formalism, can be brought to a close parallel with the Time Dependent Density Functional Theory. This concerns, in particular, the role of correlations at a finite initial time. A universal treatment of these initial conditions is possible for the switch-on states, while more general initial states have so far to be treated individually.
We solve the Kadanoff-Baym equations for nonequilibrium initial configurations of the φ 4-theory in 2+1 dimensions and compare to explicit solutions of generalized transport equations for the same theory. The latter transport equations are derived from the Kadanoff-Baym equation in a first order gradient expansion in phase space and explicitly retain the off-shell dynamics as inherent in the timedependent spectral functions. The solutions of these equations compare very well with the exact solutions of the full Kadanoff-Baym equations with respect to the occupation numbers of the individual modes, the spectral evolution as well as the chemical equilibration process. Furthermore, the proper equilibrium off-shell distribution is reached for large times contrary to the quasiparticle Boltzmann limit. We additionally present a direct comparison of the solution of the generalized transport equations in the Kadanoff-Baym and Botermans-Malfliet form; both solutions are found to agree very well with each other. PACS: 06.60.+w; 05.70.Ln; 11.10.Wx; 24.10.-i; 25.75.-q Keywords: Many-body theory; finite temperature field theory; out-of-equilibrium quantum field theory; nonequilibrium statistical physics; relativistic heavy-ion collisions Part of the PhD thesis of S. Juchem
A systematic and unambiguous method of deriving generalized transport equations, i.e., equations for distribution functions having a single-time structure, on the basis of the nonequilibrium Green function is obtained, if the common Kadanoff-Baym (KB) ansatz is replaced by a modification which we call the generalized KB ansatz. This new ansatz is fully consistent with the dynamical structure of the theory and is independent of any specific representation. The resulting equations appear to be the zeroth-order approximation of a systematic expansion in terms of the collision duration. In the case of the electron transport in a strong homogeneous electric field, the generalized ansatz is shown to be in agreement with the superoperator methods, whereas the KB ansatz is known to fail in this case.
It is well known that physical particles are thermally dissipative at finite temperature. In this paper we reformulate both the equilibrium and nonequilibrium thermal field theories in terms of stable quasiparticles. We will redefine the thermal doublets, the double tilde conjugation rules and the thermal Bogoliubov transformations so that our theory can be consistent for most general situations. All operators, including the dissipative physical particle operators, are realized in a Fock space defined by the stable quasiparticles. The propagators of the physical particles are expressed in terms of the operators of such stable quasiparticles, which is a simple diagonal matrix with the diagonal elements being the temporal step functions, same as the propagators in the usual quantum field theory without thermal degrees of freedom. The proper self-energies are also expressed in terms of these stable quasiparticle propagators. This formalism inherits the definition of on-shell self-energy in the usual quantum field theory. With this definition, a self-consistent renormalization is formulated which leads to quantum Boltzmann equation and the entropy law. With the aid of a doublet vector algebra we have an extremely simple recipe for computing Feynman diagrams. We apply this recipe to several examples of equilibrium and nonequilibrium two-point functions, and to the kinetic equation for the particle numbers.
We present a systematic comparison of the real-time Dyson expansion (RTDE) with established non-equilibrium Green's function approaches for simulating driven, interacting quantum systems. Focusing on density matrix dynamics, time-off-diagonal Green's functions, and time-resolved photoemission spectra, we benchmark RTDE against fully self-consistent Kadanoff-Baym equation (KBE) calculations, the generalized Kadanoff-Baym ansatz (GKBA), and exact diagonalization for small systems using second order many-body perturbation theory. Using a driven two-band Hubbard model, we show that mean-field single particle density matrix trajectories provide a reliable baseline for RTDE across a broad range of interaction strengths and excited-carrier populations. Further, RTDE accurately captures correlation effects in the Green's functions, including long-lived oscillations and revivals that are strongly suppressed by the overdamping inherent to self-consistent KBE schemes. As a consequence, RTDE resolves rich non-equilibrium spectral structure in time-resolved photoemission, such as interaction- and population-dependent quasiparticle splittings and bandgap renormalization, which are largely washed out in self-consistent approaches, yet are present in the exact solutions. Our results demonstrate that RTDE bridges the gap between mean-field propagation and full two-time KBE simulations, retaining favorable linear scaling while capturing essential dynamical correlations relevant for ultrafast spectroscopy.
Quasiparticle descriptions of nonequilibrium physics hold the promise of tracking the relevant degrees of freedom in calculations of statistical systems, as well as providing an important formal perspective on quantum field theories away from equilibrium.A formulation of nonequilibrium, quasiparticle field theory is presented here.The Schwinger closed time path generating functional and generalized sources are used to develop schematic field theories which can be adapted to real problems.The importance of the source method for effective nonequilibrium theories is argued and the physical interpretation of the formalism is discussed, including its possible applicability to biological dynamics.