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International Journal of Quantum Chemistry

A density functional representation of quantum chemistry. III. Rigorous realization of the program in lattice space

M. Schleicher, Hans Primas

Published Sep 1, 1975• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract A mathematically rigorous reformulation of molecular quantum mechanics in terms of the particle density operator and a canonically conjugated phase field is given. Using a momentum cutoff, it is shown that the usual molecular Hamiltonian can be expressed in terms of the particle density operator and a rigorously defined phase operator. It is shown that this Hamiltonian converges strongly to the cutoff‐free Hamiltonian. In spite of the fact that this Hamiltonian is of second order in the phase operators, all hitherto published expressions are not correct. Unfortunately, the correct formulation destroys the intuitive appeal of using the particle density operator as a coordinate for the many‐body problems of quantum chemistry. Unless somebody provides an essential new and clever idea, we propose to resist the fascination of a local quantum field theory of molecular matter in terms of the particle density operator.

DOI
10.1002/qua.560090510

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Abstract A mathematically rigorous reformulation of molecular quantum mechanics in terms of the particle density operator and a canonically conjugated phase field is given. Using a momentum cutoff, it is shown that the usual molecular Hamiltonian can be expressed in terms of the particle density operator and a rigorously defined phase operator. It is shown that this Hamiltonian converges strongly to the cutoff‐free Hamiltonian. In spite of the fact that this Hamiltonian is of second order in the phase operators, all hitherto published expressions are not correct. Unfortunately, the correct formulation destroys the intuitive appeal of using the particle density operator as a coordinate for the many‐body problems of quantum chemistry. Unless somebody provides an essential new and clever idea, we propose to resist the fascination of a local quantum field theory of molecular matter in terms of the particle density operator.
Abstract A comprehensive review of the attempts to rephrase molecular quantum mechanics in terms of the particle density operator and the current density or phase density operator is given. All pertinent investigations which have come to our attention suffer from severe mathematical inconsistencies and are not adequate to the few‐body problem of quantum chemistry. The origin of the failure of these attempts is investigated and it is shown that a realization of a local quantum field theory of molecular matter in terms of observables would presuppose the solution of many highly nontrivial mathematical problems.
Abstract The molecular N‐electron problem is formulated in terms of the particle density 𝔔(r) = ∑σ(r − qn) and its canonically conjugated field. Weyl's representation of the canonical commutation relations is used and a characteristic functional of the molecular system is introduced as the expectation value of Weyl's functional exp {i(α, Q) + i(β, P)}. The Hamiltonian equation of motion for the characteristic functional is derived and its cumulant approximation is discussed. The first paper is restricted to a general discussion, independent of a special choice of the Hamiltonian. The density functional representation may be considered as a step towards a formulation of a renormalized quantum chemistry. The lowest order cumulants of the characteristic functional are accessible to actual precision measurements; on the other hand, most experiments are correctly represented by a characteristic functional of the Gaussian type. The significance of the higher order correlations is neither theoretically nor experimentally disclosed yet, their possible importance for biological systems is mentioned, and the question is raised of how far quantum mechanics is empirically confirmed for extremely complex systems.
A density-matrix formulation of the ab initio methods of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics is presented. The variational equations for the standard calculational techniques of molecular quantum mechanics are derived from a single expression for the total energy of an N-particle system. A generalization of the Hohenberg-Kohn theorem is proved, showing that the ground-state energy of a many-body Hamiltonian is a functional of the single-particle density matrix and hence of the first-order reduced-density function (the diagonal of which is the particle density of the standard theorem). The theorem is used to develop a new method to calculate the total energy and single-particle properties of the many-body problem.
A previously developed representation for many-atom problems is extended by incorporation of all effects of interatomic exchange of electrons and nuclei into a ``projected Hamiltonian.'' An expression for the projected Hamiltonian is derived which is exact on the two-atom subspace, and hence incorporates those exchange effects which are important at low densities. By the use of the center-of-mass separation of atomic wavefunctions, this expression for the projected Hamiltonian is transformed into a representation in terms of atomic field operators ψν(r) and ψν†(r), where r is the center-of-mass position of an atom and v stands for all of its internal quantum numbers.
Abstract The functional integral representation of the density matrix at thermal equilibrium in non-relativistic quantum mechanics (QM) with many degrees of freedom, in the grand canonical formulation is introduced. In QM, Hamiltonians H(p,q) can be also expressed in terms of creation and annihilation operators, a method adapted to the study of perturbed harmonic oscillators. In the holomorphic formalism, quantum operators act by multiplication and differentiation on a vector space of analytic functions. Alternatively, they can also be represented by kernels, functions of complex variables that correspond in the classical limit to a complex parametrization of phase space. The formalism is adapted to the description of many-body boson systems. To this formalism corresponds a path integral representation of the density matrix at thermal equilibrium, where paths belong to complex spaces, instead of the more usual position–momentum phase space. A parallel formalism can be set up to describe systems with many fermion degrees of freedom, with Grassmann variables replacing complex variables. Both formalisms can be generalized to quantum gases of Bose and Fermi particles in the grand canonical formulation. Field integral representations of the corresponding quantum partition functions are derived.
Abstract Attempts to put classical and quantum mechanics on an equal footing gave rise to establishing of many known phase‐space representations of quantum mechanics. The class of self‐dual representations occupies a distinguished position among them, as they could be endowed with a Hilbert space structure closely resembling the standard picture of quantum mechanics. Using a phase‐space variational principle and the concept of a phase‐space wave function, we established a phase‐space version of the density functional theory parallel to the original Hohenberg–Kohn formalism and the constrained‐search approach by Levy and Lieb. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.