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Journal of Mathematical Physics

Excitation Operators and Intrinsic Hamiltonians

ROBERT K. NESBET

Published Apr 1, 1965• 15 citations
Publisher

Abstract

An operator A† that satisfies [H, A†] = h/ωA† converts a stationary-state eigenfunction of the Hamiltonian H into another eigenfunction with energy eigenvalue increased by h/ω. Such operators describe collective excitations of many-particle systems, and their properties can be used to construct an intrinsic Hamiltonian that is dynamically independent of the collective degrees of freedom, without introducing subsidiary conditions. The procedure developed by Lipkin, valid when h/ω is real and positive, is extended to make possible the construction of an intrinsic Hamiltonian when h/ω vanishes and A† is Hermitian, and also when h/ω is complex. The nuclear cranking model is shown to be a special case of the proposed general method for vanishing h/ω in which effective moments of inertia occur as eigenvalues of linear equations. Several examples are worked out in detail, all dealing with an interacting phonon-electron system in the random-phase approximation. Results derived are the explicit screened Coulomb interaction resulting from electronic plasma excitations, a verification of the renormalized phonon frequency spectrum and phonon-electron interaction derived in the adiabatic approximation, and the resulting screened Coulomb and phonon-induced electronic interactions obtained when plasma and phonon excitations are treated simultaneously.

DOI
10.1063/1.1704313

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An operator A† that satisfies [H, A†] = h/ωA† converts a stationary-state eigenfunction of the Hamiltonian H into another eigenfunction with energy eigenvalue increased by h/ω. Such operators describe collective excitations of many-particle systems, and their properties can be used to construct an intrinsic Hamiltonian that is dynamically independent of the collective degrees of freedom, without introducing subsidiary conditions. The procedure developed by Lipkin, valid when h/ω is real and positive, is extended to make possible the construction of an intrinsic Hamiltonian when h/ω vanishes and A† is Hermitian, and also when h/ω is complex. The nuclear cranking model is shown to be a special case of the proposed general method for vanishing h/ω in which effective moments of inertia occur as eigenvalues of linear equations. Several examples are worked out in detail, all dealing with an interacting phonon-electron system in the random-phase approximation. Results derived are the explicit screened Coulomb interaction resulting from electronic plasma excitations, a verification of the renormalized phonon frequency spectrum and phonon-electron interaction derived in the adiabatic approximation, and the resulting screened Coulomb and phonon-induced electronic interactions obtained when plasma and phonon excitations are treated simultaneously.
Microscopically conserving reduced models of many-body systems have a long, highly successful history. Established perturbative theories of this type are the random-phase approximation for Coulomb fluids and the particle-particle ladder model for nuclear matter. There are also more physically comprehensive diagrammatic approximations, such as the induced-interaction and parquet models. Notwithstanding their explanatory power, some theories have lacked an explicit Hamiltonian from which all significant system properties, static and dynamic, emerge canonically. This absence can complicate evaluation of the conserving sum rules, essential consistency checks on the validity of any theory. In a series of papers Kraichnan introduced a stochastic embedding procedure to generate explicit Hamiltonians for common approximations for the full many-body problem. Existence of a Hamiltonian greatly eases the task of securing fundamental identities in such studies. I revisit Kraichnan's method to apply it to correlation theories for which such a canonical framework has been missing. I exhibit Hamiltonians for more elaborate correlated models incorporating both long-range screening and short-range scattering phenomena. These are relevant to the study of strongly interacting electrons and condensed quantum systems broadly.
The series of articles [Ann. Phys. 345, 73 (2014) and Ann. Phys. 356, 57 (2015)] devoted to excited-state quantum phase transitions (ESQPTs) in systems with f=2f=2f=2 degrees of freedom is continued by studying the interacting boson model of nuclear collective dynamics as an example of a truly many-body system. The intrinsic Hamiltonian formalism with angular momentum fixed to L=0L=0L=0 is used to produce a generic first-order ground-state quantum phase transition with an adjustable energy barrier between the competing equilibrium configurations. The associated ESQPTs are shown to result from various classical stationary points of the model Hamiltonian, whose analysis is more complex than in previous cases because of (i) a nontrivial decomposition to kinetic and potential energy terms and (ii) the boundedness of the associated classical phase space. Finite-size effects resulting from a partial separability of both degrees of freedom are analyzed. The features studied here are inherent in a great majority of interacting boson systems.
An extended Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model for testing the proton-neutron random-phase approximation (pnRPA)(pn\mathrm{RPA})(pnRPA) method is developed, taking into account explicitly proton and neutron degrees of freedom. Besides the proton and neutron single-particle terms two types of residual proton-neutron interactions, one simulating a particle-particle and the other a particle-hole interaction, are included in the model Hamiltonian so that the model is exactly solvable in an isospin $\mathrm{SU}(2)\ensuremath{\bigotimes}\mathrm{SU}(2)$ basis. The behavior of the first excited (collective) state obtained by (i) exact diagonalization of the Hamiltonian matrix and (ii) with the pnRPA\mathrm{pn}\mathrm{RPA}pnRPA is studied as a function of the model parameters and the two results are compared with each other. Furthermore, charge-changing operators simulating nuclear beta decay and their action on eigenfunctions of the model Hamiltonian are defined and transition amplitudes of them are calculated using exact, the Tamm-Dancoff, and pnRPA\mathrm{pn}\mathrm{RPA}pnRPA eigenfunctions.
We numerically study the collective excitations present in isotropic superconductors including a screened Coulomb interaction. By varying the screening strength, we analyze its impact on the system. We use a formulation of the effective phonon-mediated interaction between electrons that depends on the energy transfer between particles, rather than being a constant in a small energy shell around the Fermi edge. This justifies considering also rather large attractive interactions. We compute the system’s Green’s functions using the iterated equations of motion (iEoM) approach, which ultimately enables a quantitative analysis of collective excitations. For weak couplings, we identify the well-known amplitude (Higgs) mode at the two-particle continuum’s lower edge and the phase (Anderson-Bogoliubov) mode at \omega = 0 ω = 0 for a neutral system, which shifts to higher energies as the Coulomb interaction is switched on. As the phononic coupling is increased, the Higgs mode separates from the continuum, and additional phase and amplitude modes appear, persisting even in the presence Coulomb interactions.
We study a physically motivated model for a trapped dilute gas of Bosons with repulsive pairwise atomic interactions at zero temperature. Our goal is to describe aspects of the excited many-body quantum states of this system by accounting for the scattering of atoms in pairs from the macroscopic state. We start with an approximate many-body Hamiltonian, H a p p \mathcal {H}_{\mathrm {app}} , in the Bosonic Fock space. This H a p p \mathcal {H}_{\mathrm {app}} conserves the total number of atoms. Inspired by Wu [J. Math. Phys. 2 (1961), 105–123], we apply a non-unitary transformation to H a p p \mathcal {H}_{\mathrm {app}} . Key in this procedure is the pair-excitation kernel, which obeys a nonlinear integro-partial differential equation. In the stationary case, we develop an existence theory for solutions to this equation by a variational principle. We connect this theory to a system of partial differential equations for one-particle excitation (“quasiparticle”-) wave functions derived by Fetter [Ann. Phys. 70 (1972), 67–101], and prove existence of solutions for this system. These wave functions solve an eigenvalue problem for a J J -self-adjoint operator. From the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian, we derive a one-particle nonlocal equation for low-lying excitations, describe its solutions, and recover Fetter’s energy spectrum. We also analytically provide an explicit construction of the excited eigenstates of the reduced Hamiltonian in the N N -particle sector of Fock space.
This article gives a discussion of the application of the extended coupled-cluster method (ECCM) to the excited states of a general quantum many-body system. The direct eigenvalue equations for the excitation amplitudes of both the ket and the bra eigenstates are derived in the biorthogonal basis obtained by a double similarity transformation. The equations correspond to the diagonalization of a matrix involving second-order functional derivatives of the average-value functional for the Hamiltonian with respect to the basic ECCM amplitudes. The same excitation spectrum is obtained by considering small oscillations around the equilibrium. The problem with its associated effective Hamiltonian has the structure of a generalized random-phase approximation. By diagonalizing the effective Hamiltonian we perform a canonical or symplectomorphic coordinate transformation into normal coordinates in the symplectic ECCM phase space. In this coordinate system the exact average-value functional for the Hamiltonian has a structure analogous to that of classical lattice dynamics or the phenomenological Ginzburg-Landau theory. At all stages the method satisfies the property of quantum locality, which in real space shows up as a definite quasilocality. Due to this property the method allows, for example, the treatment of mesonlike excitations in the presence of topological objects or in other symmetry-broken equilibrium states.