The present paper is concerned with the retarded many-time thermodynamic Green's function method in classical statistical mechanics. In the formulation of the nonlinear response of a dynamical variable, unaveraged Green's functions are specified and used to discuss the physical meaning of many-time Poisson-bracket nests. Equilibrium ensemble averages of these Green's functions are relevant to the classical Kubo response theory, the latter of which is interpreted from the viewpoints of both the classical ``Heisenberg'' and ``Schrödinger'' pictures. A method for evaluating the many-time thermodynamic Green's functions based on their definition in terms of the resolvent operator is suggested and discussed in relation to the linear dielectric function and the anharmonic oscillator. The many-time Green's function equations of motion are shown to be equivalent to identities based on the resolvent operator. It is shown how microscopic equations of motion can be used to derive the Bogoliubov-Sadovnikov (B-S) hierarchy from the lowest-order many-time Green's function equation of motion.
The problem of nonlinear response is considered by employing a general time-evolution equation, and a Green's function which is the transition or conditional probability density for an unperturbed system. Expansion of the Green's function in terms of orthonormal functions enables us to express the distribution function describing the nonlinear behavior by means of matrix products whose elements are composed of correlation functions in the absence of the perturbation. In other words, it is shown how the distribution function induced by a strong perturbation may be calculated by knowing the Green's function without the perturbation. As the special case of the linear response, we have obtained Kubo's relation. The Laplace-transform technique with respect to time is found quite useful in developing the present theory in which the transient effect is also taken into account. As an application of the theory, a new relation valid in the region of the second-order perturbation connecting the transient rise and decay with the stationary alternating perturbations has been obtained.