The analytic properties of Feynman amplitudes in the many-fermion problem are investigated by means of techniques recently developed for use in field theory. A prescription is given for calculation of discontinuities across branch cuts. This prescription leads to a reformulation of the theory in terms of quasi-particles; but considerations of unitarity are no longer so simple as they are in field theories dealing with stable particles. These analytic methods turn out to be very useful in electron transport problems.
The analytic properties of Feynman amplitudes in the many-fermion problem are investigated by means of techniques recently developed for use in field theory. A prescription is given for calculation of discontinuities across branch cuts. This prescription leads to a reformulation of the theory in terms of quasi-particles; but considerations of unitarity are no longer so simple as they are in field theories dealing with stable particles. These analytic methods turn out to be very useful in electron transport problems.
This dissertation concerns the quantum many-body problem, which is the problem of predicting the properties of systems of several quantum particles from the first principles of quantum mechanics. Included under this umbrella are various problems of fundamental importance in quantum chemistry, condensed matter physics, and materials science. Of particular interest is the electronic structure problem, the problem of determining the state of the electrons in a system with fixed atomic nuclei. Since direct numerical solution of the many-body Schrödinger equation is intractable even for systems of moderate size, a diverse array of approximate methods has been developed. The broad goals of this dissertation are to improve the mathematical understanding of certain widely-used approximations, as well as to propose new methods. Roughly speaking, we consider three (overlapping) categories of methods: Green's function methods, embedding methods, and variational methods.One can understand Green's function methods in terms of many-body perturbation theory, which computes series expansions of physical quantities about a non-interacting reference system. These expansions can be expressed graphically in terms of Feynman diagrams, which can in turn be reorganized, in some cases, into an expansion in terms of so-called bold diagrams. Green's function methods can be specified by choosing a subset of bold diagrams to approximate the sum. At the same time, such methods can be understood in terms of an object known as the Luttinger-Ward (LW) functional, which admits a representation in terms of the bold diagrams. Many aspects of these constructions are purely formal, and indeed the existence of the fermionic LW functional as a single-valued functional has recently been called into question. To contribute to the understanding of these issues, we provide rigorous proofs of the combinatorial construction and analytic interpretation of the bold diagrams in the simplified setting of a classical field theory. In this setting we also provide a rigorous non-perturbative construction of the LW functional via convex duality and prove several key properties, including continuity up to the boundary of its domain and asymptotics in the limit of large interaction.Quantum embedding methods, meanwhile, view a large system as being composed of smaller fragments that are treated with high accuracy and embedded in the larger system in a mutually consistent way. Inspired by a connection between the boundary analysis of the LW functional and embedding, we perform similar analysis for the 1-RDM theory for fermionic systems, which is also developed via convex duality, illustrating a relation to fermionic embedding methods such as the density matrix embedding theory (DMET).Another embedding method of note is the dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT), which is at the same time a Green's function method that can be understood in terms of the LW functional. DMFT relies on the solution of impurity problems, which specify the embedding of an interacting system into a non-interacting bath. Underlying DMFT is a result about the sparsity pattern of the self-energy matrix for impurity problems, which to our knowledge has not been proved in the literature. We provide a rigorous proof of this result in various classical and quantum settings. We go on to investigate the fermionic DMFT in depth, identifying the key mathematical structures that appear in the algorithmic loop for solving it and using these to prove the well-posedness of this loop, in a certain sense.Finally, we introduce a suite of new approaches to the quantum many-body problem that provide variational lower bounds to the ground-state energy. These methods, which combine the themes of convexity and embedding, are based on novel convex relaxations of the variational principles for the ground-state energies of many-body systems. To begin, we recover a second-quantized version of the formalism of strictly correlated electrons (SCE), which yields an exact expression for the exchange-correlation functional in Kohn-Sham density functional theory in the limit of infinite Coulomb repulsion in terms of the solution of a multi-marginal optimal transport problem. We introduce a semidefinite relaxation method for approximately solving this problem and obtaining a lower bound for the ground-state energy. The ideas underlying this relaxation are generalized considerably, outside the context of SCE, to yield much tighter lower bounds, which we validate numerically for both quantum spin systems and fermionic systems. We also describe how these relaxation methods can be interpreted as embedding methods via convex duality.
Abstract We study the “three particle coupling” Γ111(ξ) Γ111ξ , in 2dIsing Field Theory in a magnetic field, as the function of the scaling parameterξ:=h/(−m)15/8, wherem∼Tc−Tandh∼Hare scaled deviation from the critical temperature and scaled external field, respectively. The “φ3coupling” Γ111 Γ111 is defined in terms of the residue of the 2 → 2 elastic scattering amplitude at its pole associated with the lightest particle itself. We limit attention to the High-Temperature domain, so thatmis negative. We suggest “standard analyticity”: (Γ111)2 Γ1112 , as the function ofu:=ξ2, is analytic in the whole complexu-plane except for the branch cut from – ∞ to –u0≈ – 0.03585, the latter branching point –u0being associated with the Yang-Lee edge singularity. Under this assumption, the values of Γ111 Γ111 at any complexuare expressed through the discontinuity across the branch cut. We suggest approximation for this discontinuity which accounts for singular expansion of Γ111 Γ111 near the Yang-Lee branching point, as well as its known asymptotic atu →+∞. The resulting dispersion relation agrees well with known exact data, and with numerics obtained via Truncated Free Fermion Space Approach. This work is part of extended project of studying the S-matrix of the Ising Field Theory in a magnetic field.
We study the scaling functions associated with the lightest particle mass M1 in 2d Ising field theory in external magnetic field. The scaling functions depend on the scaling parameter ξ=h/∣m∣815, or related parameter η=m/h158. Analytic properties of M1 in the high-T domain were discussed in arXiv:2203.11262. In this work, we study analyticity of M1 in the low-T domain. Important feature of this analytic structure is represented by the Fisher-Langer's branch cut. The discontinuity across this branch cut determines the behavior of M1 at all complex ξ via associated low-T dispersion relation. Also, we put forward the "extended analyticity" conjecture for M1 in the complex η-plane, similar to the analyticity of the free energy density previously proposed in arXiv:hep-th/0112167. The extended analyticity implies the "extended dispersion relation", which we verify against the numerics from the Truncated Free Fermion Approach (TFFSA), giving strong support to the conjecture.
In this dissertation, we develop and apply a relativistic framework for studying three-body scattering amplitudes, their analytic structure, and the emergence of universal phenomena such as the Efimov effect. The work integrates three complementary components. First, we introduce a systematically improvable numerical method for solving relativistic three-body integral equations in momentum space. By discretizing the continuum problem into finite matrix equations and extrapolating to the continuum limit, we obtain stable partial-wave amplitudes in the presence of a two-body bound state. Two complementary treatments of the pole contribution are implemented and shown to reproduce previous finite volume results, with controlled estimates of systematic uncertainties. Second, we provide a general prescription for analytically continuing these integral equations into the complex energy plane. Using contour-deformation techniques guided by the singularity structure of the kernel, we compute amplitudes below elastic thresholds and on multiple Riemann sheets. This allows us to determine three-body bound and virtual states consistent with earlier finite-volume studies, and to identify departures from the standard two-body finite-volume formalism due to left-hand cuts. Finally, we apply this framework to study Efimov physics in a fully relativistic setting. By tuning the interaction toward unitarity, we observe the characteristic discrete scaling symmetry of Efimov trimers and recover the expected geometric energy pattern. Tracking trimer poles across physical and unphysical Riemann sheets, we reveal rich trajectories connecting virtual states, bound states, and resonances. We also uncover cyclic behavior of higher Efimov resonances and propose a partial resolution to the associated “missing states” puzzle in terms of the multi-sheeted structure induced by the logarithmic three-body unitarity cut. Overall, this work establishes a coherent relativistic approach to the three-body problem, clarifies its analytic structure, and demonstrates its ability to capture universal features relevant to nuclear, hadronic, and atomic few-body systems.