Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

Physical Review

Summation Convention and the Density Matrix in Quantum Theory

BRIAN H. CHIRGWIN

Published Aug 15, 1957• 30 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Projection operators may be used instead of vectors to represent the states of a quantum-mechanical system and the appropriate equation of motion is obtained. When a basis is used the basic vectors may be oblique or orthogonal. A formulation appropriate to an oblique basis is developed with the help of tensor methods and the summation convention. This is generalized to be applicable to systems containing $N$ electrons subject to Pauli's exclusion principle. The projection operator corresponding to an arbitrary state is the density operator and is represented by an $N\mathrm{th}$-order tensor. The well-known tensor operation of contraction of indices applied to the density operator furnishes similar, reduced operators giving one-, two-, or more-particle properties of the system. The one-particle properties are of special interest in chemical systems, the corresponding reduced density matrix being called the charge and bond order matrix by L\"owdin. The full formulas for the reduction of the general density matrix are given, showing the origin of the Coulomb and exchange operators.When the symbolic equation of motion is expressed by means of components and the process of contraction (reduction) is applied, the equation of motion of the one-particle reduction is obtained as well as an expression for the energy of the system. In the special case of the Hartree-Fock approximation the time-dependent wave equations for the one-particle orbitals are shown to satisfy the general equation of motion, suggesting that the energies of the individual orbitals need not be stationary. This approximation is characterized by the idempotent property of the one-particle reduced density matrix. This condition alone leads to a close restriction on the possible values of the charge and bond orders of a molecule. Specific formulas for the molecule butadiene show that these can be expressed in terms of two parameters only, in this case.

DOI
10.1103/physrev.107.1013

Related papers

Density matrices and density functionals : proceedings of the A. John Coleman symposium

Alan Coleman, Robert Erdahl, Vedene H. Smith

A Tribute to A. John Coleman - The Tame Mathematician.- Reduced Density Matrices: 1929-1989.- Some Aspects on the Development of the Theory of Reduced Density Matrices and the Representability Problem.- Representability Conditions.- On the Diagonal N-Representability Problem.- Fermion N-Representability Conditions Generated by a Decomposition of the 1-Particle Identity Operator onto Mutually Orthogonal Projection Operators.- The Unitarily Invariant Decomposition of Hermitian Operators.- Building Up N-Electron States with Symplectic Symmetry.- Time Dependent Antisymmetrized Geminal Power Theory Using a Coherent State Formulation.- Griffiths Inequalities for Fermion Systems.- Entropy of Reduced Density Matrices.- A Lower Bound to the Ground State Energy of a Boson System With Fermion Source.- Reduced Density Operators, Their Related von Neumann Density Operators, Close Cousins of These, and Their Physical Interpretation.- Theory and Practice of the Spin-Adapted Reduced Hamiltonians (SRH).- Variational Principle with Built-In Pure State N-Representability Conditions. The N-Electron Case.- Wigner Distributions as Representations of the Density Matrix.- Inter-Relationships Between Various Representations of One-Matrices and Related Densities: A Road Map and an Example ..- Current Problems in Density Functional Theory.- The Interface Between Reduced Density Matrices and Density Functional Theory.- The Physics Underlying the Langreth-Mehl Scheme for Non-Uniform Systems.- Understanding Energy Differences in Density Functional Theory.- Density Functional Calculations of Molecular Bond Energies.- Non-Local Effects on Atomic and Molecular Correlation Energies Studied with a Gradient-Corrected Density Functional.- An Evaluation of Local Electron Correlation Corrections and Non-Local Exchange Corrections to the Hartree-Fock-Slater Method from Calculations on Bond Energies and Electronic Spectra of Molecular Systems.- Correlation Energy Functionals of One-Matrices and Hartree-Fock Densities.- Some Remarks on Scaling Relations in Density Functional Theory.- Deduction of Semiempirical MO Methods from Density Functional Theory.- Charge and Spin Densities in Molecular Solids: Local Density Functional Calculations Versus Experiment.- A Functional of the Two-Particle Density Matrix for the Approximate Calculation of the Electronic Correlation Energy.- Extracules, Intracules, Correlation Holes, Potentials, Coefficients and All That.- The Exact Schroedinger Equation for the Electron Density.- Adiabatic Separation, Broken Symmetries and Geometry Optimization.- Asymptotic Results for Density Matrices and Electron Density in Atoms and Nearly Spherical Molecules.- An Algorithm for Calculating Isoelectronic Changes in Energies, Densities, and One-Matrices.- Atoms and Ions in the Limit of Large Nuclear Charge.- Improved Thomas-Fermi Theory for Atoms.- A Bond Energy from Quantum Mechanics.- Measured Electron Densities and Band Structure Calculations.- X-ray Orthonormal Orbital Model for Crystallography.

D. Reidel Pub. Co. eBooks•Jan 1, 1987•19 citations

Possibilities for a density matrix theory

Marcel Nooijen

Two possible routes are considered to arrive at a one-particle reduced density matrix formulation of electronic structure theory. In the first scheme, an extended Fock matrix H is defined that has twice the dimension of the one-particle basis set. The corresponding Green’s function, defined as the upper left block of (ω1−H)−1, yields the exact one-particle density matrix and energy. The poles of the Green’s function are precisely the ionization potentials and electron affinities of the extended Koopmans theorem. In the second scheme, a generalized Fock equation [F(ρ),ρ]=X is derived that is satisfied by the exact non-idempotent one-particle density matrix. The antisymmetric matrix X on the right-hand side is obtained from the irreducible part of the two-particle reduced density matrix, while F is the usual Fock matrix defined using the correlated one-matrix. The generalized Fock equation is a necessary condition but does not determine ρ uniquely. Alternatively, the one-matrix can be obtained from the irreducible part of the two-matrix directly, using a sum rule. The analysis leads to some additional desiderata and separability properties that may be imposed on traditional wave function based approaches. Possibilities for practical computational schemes are addressed briefly.

The Journal of Chemical Physics•Nov 8, 1999•11 citations

Quantum Theory of Many-Particle Systems. II. Study of the Ordinary Hartree-Fock Approximation

Per‐Olov Löwdin

A system of $N$ antisymmetric particles, moving under the influence of a fixed potential and their mutual many-particle interactions, is investigated in the ordinary Hartree-Fock scheme, having the total wave function approximated by a single Slater determinant. It is shown that all the density matrices of various orders, the wave function, and the entire physical situation depends only on a fundamental invariant $\ensuremath{\rho}({x}_{1}, {x}_{2})$, which is identical with the first-order density matrix. The Hartree-Fock equations are expressed in terms of this quantity.The Hartree-Fock equations are also solved by expanding the eigenfunctions in a given complete set, and applications to the MO-LCAO theory of the electronic structure of molecules, and crystals are given. It is shown that, in this scheme, the entire physical situation depends on a charge- and bond-order matrix $R(\ensuremath{\nu}\ensuremath{\mu})$ with respect to the ordinary atomic spin-orbitals involved. The Hartree-Fock equations for this matrix are investigated.Finally, the ionized and excited states are investigated, and it is shown that the Hartree-Fock scheme has a high degree of physical visuality also in case of many-particle interactions. The excitation energy of the system is the difference (${{\ensuremath{\omega}}_{j}}^{\ensuremath{'}}\ensuremath{-}{\ensuremath{\omega}}_{i}$) between two "spin-orbital energies," being eigenvalues to the effective Hamiltonians associated with the two states under consideration.

Physical Review•Mar 15, 1955•467 citations

Quantum Theory of Many-Particle Systems. I. Physical Interpretations by Means of Density Matrices, Natural Spin-Orbitals, and Convergence Problems in the Method of Configurational Interaction

Per‐Olov Löwdin

In order to calculate the average value of a physical quantity containing also many-particle interactions in a system of $N$ antisymmetric particles, a set of generalized density matrices are defined. In order to permit the investigation of the same physical situation in two complementary spaces, the Hermitean density matrix of order $k$ has two sets of indices of each $k$ variables, and it is further antisymmetric in each set of these indices.Every normalizable antisymmetric wave function may be expanded in a series of determinants of order $N$ over all ordered configurations formed from a basic complete set of one-particle functions ${\ensuremath{\psi}}_{k}$, which gives a representation of the wave function and its density matrices also in the discrete $k$-space. The coefficients in an expansion of an eigenfunction to a particular operator may be determined by the variation principle, leading to the ordinary secular equation of the method of configurational interaction. It is shown that the first-order density matrix may be brought to diagonal form, which defines the "natural spin-orbitals" associated with the system. The situation is then partly characterized by the corresponding occupation numbers, which are shown to lie between 0 and 1 and to assume the value 1, only if the corresponding spin-orbital occurs in all configurations necessary for describing the situation. If the system has exactly $N$ spin-orbitals which are fully occupied, the total wave function may be reduced to a single Slater determinant. However, due to the mutual interaction between the particles, this limiting case is never physically realized, but the introduction of natural spin-orbitals leads then instead to a configurational expansion of most rapid convergence.In case the basic set is of finite order $M$, the best choice of this set is determined by a form of extended Hartree-Fock equations. It is shown that, in this case, the natural spin-orbitals approximately fulfill some equations previously proposed by Slater.

Physical Review•Mar 15, 1955•3,587 citations

Gaussian phase-space representation of fermion dynamics: Beyond the time-dependent Hartree-Fock approximation

Saar Rahav, Shaul Mukamel

A Gaussian operator representation for the many-body density matrix of fermionic systems, developed by Corney and Drummond [Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 260401 (2004)], is used to derive approximate decoupling schemes for their dynamics. In this approach the reduced single electron density-matrix elements serve as stochastic variables which satisfy an exact Fokker-Planck equation. The number of variables scales as $\ensuremath{\sim}{N}^{2}$ rather than $\ensuremath{\sim}\text{exp}(N)$ with the basis set size, and the time-dependent Hartree-Fock approximation (TDHF) is recovered in the ``classical'' limit. An approximate closed set of equations of motion for the one- and two-particle reduced density matrices provides a direct generalization of the TDHF.

arXiv:0902.3227•Physical Review B•Apr 10, 2009•10 citations

Generalization of the Kohn-Sham system enabling representing arbitary one electron density matrices

van Dam, J J Hubertus

Density functional theory is currently the most widely applied method in electronic structure theory. The Kohn-Sham method, based on a fictitious system of non-interacting particles, is the work horse of the theory. The particular form of the Kohn-Sham wavefunction admits only idem-potent one electron density matrices whereas wavefunctions of correlated electrons in post-Hartree-Fock methods invariably have fractional occupation numbers. Here we show that by generalizing the orbital concept, and introducing a suitable dot-product as well as a probability density a non-interacting system can be chosen that can represent the one-electron density matrix of any system, even one with fractional occupation numbers. This fictitious system ensures that the exact electron density is accessible within density functional theory. It can also serve as the basis for reduced density matrix functional theory. Moreover, to aid the analysis of the results the orbitals may be assigned energies from a mean-field Hamiltonian. This produces energy levels that are akin to Hartree-Fock orbital energies such that conventional analyses based on Koopmans theorem are available. Finally, this system is convenient in formalisms that depend on creation and annihilation operators as they are trivially applied to single determinant wavefunctions.

arXiv:1512.06120•Dec 7, 2015•0 citations
Projection operators may be used instead of vectors to represent the states of a quantum-mechanical system and the appropriate equation of motion is obtained. When a basis is used the basic vectors may be oblique or orthogonal. A formulation appropriate to an oblique basis is developed with the help of tensor methods and the summation convention. This is generalized to be applicable to systems containing NNN electrons subject to Pauli's exclusion principle. The projection operator corresponding to an arbitrary state is the density operator and is represented by an NthN\mathrm{th}Nth-order tensor. The well-known tensor operation of contraction of indices applied to the density operator furnishes similar, reduced operators giving one-, two-, or more-particle properties of the system. The one-particle properties are of special interest in chemical systems, the corresponding reduced density matrix being called the charge and bond order matrix by L"owdin. The full formulas for the reduction of the general density matrix are given, showing the origin of the Coulomb and exchange operators.When the symbolic equation of motion is expressed by means of components and the process of contraction (reduction) is applied, the equation of motion of the one-particle reduction is obtained as well as an expression for the energy of the system. In the special case of the Hartree-Fock approximation the time-dependent wave equations for the one-particle orbitals are shown to satisfy the general equation of motion, suggesting that the energies of the individual orbitals need not be stationary. This approximation is characterized by the idempotent property of the one-particle reduced density matrix. This condition alone leads to a close restriction on the possible values of the charge and bond orders of a molecule. Specific formulas for the molecule butadiene show that these can be expressed in terms of two parameters only, in this case.
A Tribute to A. John Coleman - The Tame Mathematician.- Reduced Density Matrices: 1929-1989.- Some Aspects on the Development of the Theory of Reduced Density Matrices and the Representability Problem.- Representability Conditions.- On the Diagonal N-Representability Problem.- Fermion N-Representability Conditions Generated by a Decomposition of the 1-Particle Identity Operator onto Mutually Orthogonal Projection Operators.- The Unitarily Invariant Decomposition of Hermitian Operators.- Building Up N-Electron States with Symplectic Symmetry.- Time Dependent Antisymmetrized Geminal Power Theory Using a Coherent State Formulation.- Griffiths Inequalities for Fermion Systems.- Entropy of Reduced Density Matrices.- A Lower Bound to the Ground State Energy of a Boson System With Fermion Source.- Reduced Density Operators, Their Related von Neumann Density Operators, Close Cousins of These, and Their Physical Interpretation.- Theory and Practice of the Spin-Adapted Reduced Hamiltonians (SRH).- Variational Principle with Built-In Pure State N-Representability Conditions. The N-Electron Case.- Wigner Distributions as Representations of the Density Matrix.- Inter-Relationships Between Various Representations of One-Matrices and Related Densities: A Road Map and an Example ..- Current Problems in Density Functional Theory.- The Interface Between Reduced Density Matrices and Density Functional Theory.- The Physics Underlying the Langreth-Mehl Scheme for Non-Uniform Systems.- Understanding Energy Differences in Density Functional Theory.- Density Functional Calculations of Molecular Bond Energies.- Non-Local Effects on Atomic and Molecular Correlation Energies Studied with a Gradient-Corrected Density Functional.- An Evaluation of Local Electron Correlation Corrections and Non-Local Exchange Corrections to the Hartree-Fock-Slater Method from Calculations on Bond Energies and Electronic Spectra of Molecular Systems.- Correlation Energy Functionals of One-Matrices and Hartree-Fock Densities.- Some Remarks on Scaling Relations in Density Functional Theory.- Deduction of Semiempirical MO Methods from Density Functional Theory.- Charge and Spin Densities in Molecular Solids: Local Density Functional Calculations Versus Experiment.- A Functional of the Two-Particle Density Matrix for the Approximate Calculation of the Electronic Correlation Energy.- Extracules, Intracules, Correlation Holes, Potentials, Coefficients and All That.- The Exact Schroedinger Equation for the Electron Density.- Adiabatic Separation, Broken Symmetries and Geometry Optimization.- Asymptotic Results for Density Matrices and Electron Density in Atoms and Nearly Spherical Molecules.- An Algorithm for Calculating Isoelectronic Changes in Energies, Densities, and One-Matrices.- Atoms and Ions in the Limit of Large Nuclear Charge.- Improved Thomas-Fermi Theory for Atoms.- A Bond Energy from Quantum Mechanics.- Measured Electron Densities and Band Structure Calculations.- X-ray Orthonormal Orbital Model for Crystallography.
Two possible routes are considered to arrive at a one-particle reduced density matrix formulation of electronic structure theory. In the first scheme, an extended Fock matrix H is defined that has twice the dimension of the one-particle basis set. The corresponding Green’s function, defined as the upper left block of (ω1−H)−1, yields the exact one-particle density matrix and energy. The poles of the Green’s function are precisely the ionization potentials and electron affinities of the extended Koopmans theorem. In the second scheme, a generalized Fock equation [F(ρ),ρ]=X is derived that is satisfied by the exact non-idempotent one-particle density matrix. The antisymmetric matrix X on the right-hand side is obtained from the irreducible part of the two-particle reduced density matrix, while F is the usual Fock matrix defined using the correlated one-matrix. The generalized Fock equation is a necessary condition but does not determine ρ uniquely. Alternatively, the one-matrix can be obtained from the irreducible part of the two-matrix directly, using a sum rule. The analysis leads to some additional desiderata and separability properties that may be imposed on traditional wave function based approaches. Possibilities for practical computational schemes are addressed briefly.
A system of NNN antisymmetric particles, moving under the influence of a fixed potential and their mutual many-particle interactions, is investigated in the ordinary Hartree-Fock scheme, having the total wave function approximated by a single Slater determinant. It is shown that all the density matrices of various orders, the wave function, and the entire physical situation depends only on a fundamental invariant $\ensuremath{\rho}({x}_{1}, {x}_{2})$, which is identical with the first-order density matrix. The Hartree-Fock equations are expressed in terms of this quantity.The Hartree-Fock equations are also solved by expanding the eigenfunctions in a given complete set, and applications to the MO-LCAO theory of the electronic structure of molecules, and crystals are given. It is shown that, in this scheme, the entire physical situation depends on a charge- and bond-order matrix $R(\ensuremath{\nu}\ensuremath{\mu})$ with respect to the ordinary atomic spin-orbitals involved. The Hartree-Fock equations for this matrix are investigated.Finally, the ionized and excited states are investigated, and it is shown that the Hartree-Fock scheme has a high degree of physical visuality also in case of many-particle interactions. The excitation energy of the system is the difference (${{\ensuremath{\omega}}_{j}}^{\ensuremath{'}}\ensuremath{-}{\ensuremath{\omega}}_{i}$) between two "spin-orbital energies," being eigenvalues to the effective Hamiltonians associated with the two states under consideration.
In order to calculate the average value of a physical quantity containing also many-particle interactions in a system of NNN antisymmetric particles, a set of generalized density matrices are defined. In order to permit the investigation of the same physical situation in two complementary spaces, the Hermitean density matrix of order kkk has two sets of indices of each kkk variables, and it is further antisymmetric in each set of these indices.Every normalizable antisymmetric wave function may be expanded in a series of determinants of order NNN over all ordered configurations formed from a basic complete set of one-particle functions ${\ensuremath{\psi}}_{k}$, which gives a representation of the wave function and its density matrices also in the discrete kkk-space. The coefficients in an expansion of an eigenfunction to a particular operator may be determined by the variation principle, leading to the ordinary secular equation of the method of configurational interaction. It is shown that the first-order density matrix may be brought to diagonal form, which defines the "natural spin-orbitals" associated with the system. The situation is then partly characterized by the corresponding occupation numbers, which are shown to lie between 0 and 1 and to assume the value 1, only if the corresponding spin-orbital occurs in all configurations necessary for describing the situation. If the system has exactly NNN spin-orbitals which are fully occupied, the total wave function may be reduced to a single Slater determinant. However, due to the mutual interaction between the particles, this limiting case is never physically realized, but the introduction of natural spin-orbitals leads then instead to a configurational expansion of most rapid convergence.In case the basic set is of finite order MMM, the best choice of this set is determined by a form of extended Hartree-Fock equations. It is shown that, in this case, the natural spin-orbitals approximately fulfill some equations previously proposed by Slater.
A Gaussian operator representation for the many-body density matrix of fermionic systems, developed by Corney and Drummond [Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 260401 (2004)], is used to derive approximate decoupling schemes for their dynamics. In this approach the reduced single electron density-matrix elements serve as stochastic variables which satisfy an exact Fokker-Planck equation. The number of variables scales as $\ensuremath{\sim}{N}^{2}$ rather than $\ensuremath{\sim}\text{exp}(N)$ with the basis set size, and the time-dependent Hartree-Fock approximation (TDHF) is recovered in the ``classical'' limit. An approximate closed set of equations of motion for the one- and two-particle reduced density matrices provides a direct generalization of the TDHF.
Density functional theory is currently the most widely applied method in electronic structure theory. The Kohn-Sham method, based on a fictitious system of non-interacting particles, is the work horse of the theory. The particular form of the Kohn-Sham wavefunction admits only idem-potent one electron density matrices whereas wavefunctions of correlated electrons in post-Hartree-Fock methods invariably have fractional occupation numbers. Here we show that by generalizing the orbital concept, and introducing a suitable dot-product as well as a probability density a non-interacting system can be chosen that can represent the one-electron density matrix of any system, even one with fractional occupation numbers. This fictitious system ensures that the exact electron density is accessible within density functional theory. It can also serve as the basis for reduced density matrix functional theory. Moreover, to aid the analysis of the results the orbitals may be assigned energies from a mean-field Hamiltonian. This produces energy levels that are akin to Hartree-Fock orbital energies such that conventional analyses based on Koopmans theorem are available. Finally, this system is convenient in formalisms that depend on creation and annihilation operators as they are trivially applied to single determinant wavefunctions.