The general form of the energy of the ground state of a many-fermion system is shown to be exactly of the form proposed by Brueckner and Bethe, without approximation. In a variational treatment, if the trial wave function is picked containing only pair correlations, together with all possible unlinked pairs, it is described by a two-body excitation matrix
〈m1m2∣A∣p1p2〉. Variation of this matrix in the Ritz-Rayleigh principle yields a set of integral equations of the scattering type for the matrix
A. Hole-state energies are given self-consistently in terms of the matrix
A, but particle-state energies are Hartree-Fock energies. This may be corrected for by widely enlarging the class of terms admitted into the wave function. If the approximation is then made of omitting a class of terms, defined as cross-linked clusters in $〈\ensuremath{\psi}|H|\ensuremath{\psi}〉$, the particle-state energies are easily renormalized. Variation then leads to an infinite hierarchy of integral equations.
Certain general properties of single-particle propagators for a system of interacting fermions are derived. In addition, the properties of the proper self-energy part ${G}_{k}(\ensuremath{\zeta})$ which were used in previous work on the ground-state energy and on the Fermi surface are established. In particular, the fact that to all orders of perturbation theory in the interaction, $\mathrm{Im} {G}_{k}(x\ensuremath{-}i{0}^{+})$ behaves like ${C}_{k}{(x\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\mu})}^{2}$ (
Ck>0) for
x very near $\ensuremath{\mu}$, is proved.
New forms of the linked cluster expansion for the ground-state energy of a normal spherical system are given in terms of the exact single-particle propagator and of the associated self-energy operator. These forms are shown to be stationary with respect to variations of the latter quantities. A new concise proof of the Hugenholtz-Van Hove theorem on single-particle energies is then possible. The variational principle also explains the insensitivity of recent binding energy calculations to the choice of single-particle energies. It is shown how all results may be extended to systems with anisotropic features.
We investigate several approximations for self-bound many-fermion systems, each of which employs the Green's-function formalism together with a suitable factorization to close the otherwise infinite hierarchy of coupled integral equations. The particular approximations, which attempt to include the important two-body correlations for short-range forces, differ in the choice of propagator $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$ for two-particle intermediate states in the
T matrix used to calculate the two-body correlation function. The advantages and shortcomings of the choice ${\ensuremath{\Lambda}}_{00}\ensuremath{\sim}{{G}_{1}}^{0}{{G}_{1}}^{0}$ have been noted previously and are not treated here. We show that the choice ${\ensuremath{\Lambda}}_{10}\ensuremath{\sim}{{G}_{1}}^{0}{G}_{1}$, which appears in a "natural" factorization, is formulated in a manner which preserves much of the simplicity of the ${\ensuremath{\Lambda}}_{00}$ approximation. (Numerical calculations using the ${\ensuremath{\Lambda}}_{10}$ approximation are presented by Foster in the following paper.) The ground-state energies for three $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$ approximations (${\ensuremath{\Lambda}}_{00}$, ${\ensuremath{\Lambda}}_{10}$, and ${\ensuremath{\Lambda}}_{11}\ensuremath{\sim}{G}_{1}{G}_{1}$) are expanded through third order in the interaction strength to facilitate comparison with each other and with the Brueckner-Goldstone series. Numerical comparison of these third-order contributions for a square-well potential is presented. ${\ensuremath{\Lambda}}_{10}$ is in dramatically closer agreement with the full perturbation theory (for ${{k}_{F}}^{0}c\ensuremath{\lesssim}1$) than are the other $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$ approximations or Brueckner theory.
The perturbation series for the ground-state energy of a many-fermion system is investigated to arbitrary order for the "isotropic" case. This is the case of over-all spherical symmetry, both in the interaction and in the unperturbed single particle energies. It is shown that for spin one-half fermions the Brueckner-Goldstone perturbation series is valid to all orders in the perturbation. For spins greater than one-half it is in general incorrect even in the isotropic case, unless the interactions are spin independent.The discussion to arbitrary order in the interaction is carried out by means of a Feynman-like propagator formalism, which is developed in detail.
A general system composed of many weakly interacting bosons and/or fermions is considered. The object is to develop a procedure for renormalizing the single-particle creation operators, so as to remove the interactions to successively higher orders of perturbation. The basic idea is that creation operators ${{\ensuremath{\theta}}_{i}}^{\ifmmode\dagger\else\textdagger\fi{}}$ must satisfy the Hamiltonian commutator equations $[\mathcal{H},{{\ensuremath{\theta}}_{i}}^{\ifmmode\dagger\else\textdagger\fi{}}]={\ensuremath{\omega}}_{i}{{\ensuremath{\theta}}_{i}}^{\ifmmode\dagger\else\textdagger\fi{}}$, where
H is the Hamiltonian and ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{i}$ are the particle energies. For the many-weakly-interacting-particle system, the zeroth-order boson and fermion creation operators satisfy these equations to zeroth order. It is shown that if the creation operators are renormalized so as to satisfy the Hamiltonian commutator equations to order
m, and also to satisfy the appropriate boson commutators and fermion anticommutators to order
m, then the problem is solved to order
m. In particular, the vectors formed by operating on the ground state with the renormalized creation operators, according to the usual boson and fermion occupation-number representation, are eigenvectors of
H and are orthonormal, all to order
m. A procedure is otained for finding the (
m+1)-order contributions to the particle creation energies, in terms of the
m-order operators. Explicit first-order calculations of these general results are provided for a system of bosons and a system of fermions, and these first-order results are shown to include similar results of Rayleigh-Schr\"odinger perturbation theory, the random-phase approximation, and the method of thermodynamic Green's functions. The problem of anharmonic lattice dynamics is studied in detail, and a method of undetermined coefficients is used to renormalize the phonon creation operators to first order. The phonon energies are calculated to second order, and this calculation shows that the interactions between renormalized phonons cannot be removed in second order. Statistical averages of the phonon energies give the energy shifts and lifetimes which have been calculated previously by various propagator techniques. In addition, the renormalized energies are used to calculate the temperature-dependent part of the Helmholtz free energy correct to second order. As a final example, electron-phonon interactions in a normal metal are studied. The electron and phonon creation operators are renormalized to first order, the particle energies are calculated to second order, and statistical averages of the particle energies recover the usual thermodynamic Green's-function results for energy shifts and lifetimes. These examples show the simplicity by which the renormalization procedure obtains a great amount of detailed information about the single-particle nature of a many-particle system.