Variation principles for obtaining lower bounds by means of density matrices are applied to a number of many-body problems. This is done by means of restrictions derived from the study of exacly solvable models. Two classes of problems are considered: (a) obtaining a lower bound to the ground-state energy of a system of particles, and (b) obtaining a lower bound to the Helmholtz free energy. For the first case an exact lower bound is obtained for the ground-state energy of the particle-conserving Bogoliubov Hamiltonian. Of particular significance in the nonzero temperature case is a rigorous lower bound to the free energy of the Ising model with small external field at low temperatures.
The polaron features for long-range electron–phonon interaction are investigated by extending a variational approach previously proposed for the study of systems with local coupling. The ground state spectral weight, the average kinetic energy, the mean number of phonons, and the electron–lattice correlation function are discussed for a wide range of model parameters focusing on the adiabatic regime and comparing the results with the short-range case (Holstein model). A strong mixing of electronic and phononic degrees of freedom for small values of the electron–phonon coupling constant is found in the adiabatic case due to the long-range interaction. Finally a polaron ‘phase diagram’ is proposed.
An optimized phonon approach for the numerical diagonalization of interacting electron-phonon systems is proposed. The variational method is based on an expansion in coherent states that leads to a dramatic truncation in the phonon space. The reliability of the approach is demonstrated for the extended Holstein model showing that different types of lattice distortions are present at intermediate electron-phonon couplings as observed in strongly correlated systems. The connection with the density matrix renormalization group is discussed.
We establish a new iterative method for computing rigorous lower bounds for the ground-state energies of all atoms and ions. The accuracy of the resulting bounds depends on two ingredients: the quality of the initial energy estimate and the quality of the used upper bound for the maximum number of bound electrons,
Nc(Z), as a function of the nuclear charge
Z>0. In particular, this new method allows us to establish the explicit lower bound
E(N,Z)≥−0.8710N1/3Z2 for the ground-state energy
E(N,Z) of the atom/ion with
N∈N electrons and nuclear charge
Z∈(0,N], thereby considerably improving the best known constant
A=(3/2)1/3≈1.1447 in the estimate
E(N,Z)≥−AN1/3Z2 for
0<Z≤N and coming much closer to the best possible constant given by the Thomas-Fermi asymptotics
limN→∞∣E(N,N)∣N−7/3=−ETF(1)≈0.7687 derived in Adv. Math., 23(1) by Lieb and Simon. To demonstrate the potential and the limits of our method, we also compute explicit lower bounds for the ground-state energies
E(N,N) of all atoms with
2≤N≤86 and we compare them with the bounds obtained in J. Chem. Phys., 62(8) by Hertel, Lieb, Thirring and the bounds obtained by Seco in his dissertation. Finally, we also provide a uniqueness result for the expectation values of the kinetic, potential and interaction energies on the ground-state space.
The energies of bipolaron states in three- and two-dimensional systems are calculated variationally, treating the electron-phonon interaction in the Fr\"ohlich approximation, and separating the relative motion from the center-of-mass motion. The bipolaron is bound if the electron-phonon coupling constant \ensuremath{\alpha} is larger than 6 in three dimensions and 2 in two dimensions, provided the ratio \ensuremath{\eta}=${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\epsilon}}}_{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\infty}}}$/${\mathrm{\ensuremath{\epsilon}}}_{0}$ is smaller than a critical value which depends on \ensuremath{\alpha}. The theory yields the free-polaron energies as given in the Lee, Low, and Pines approximation for arbitrary values of the electron-phonon coupling constant \ensuremath{\alpha}. For \ensuremath{\alpha} larger than \ensuremath{\sim}10 and \ensuremath{\sim}4 in the three- and two-dimensional cases, respectively, the lowest free-polaron self-energies are obtained in the strong-coupling approach; it is shown that a trial harmonic envelope wave function, localized both in the center-of-mass and relative coordinates, with a coherent phonon state gives a bound localized bipolaron state of lower energy. It is interesting for application to high-
Tc superconductivity that the bipolaron bounds more easily in two dimensions than in three, and that the mean value of the pair radius is a few angstroms. Furthermore, bipolaron states obtained when the linear total momentum is conserved have intrinsically high mobility, which is also an important condition to make the bipolaron mechanism consistent with high-temperature superconductivity.
Using a variational ansatz in which pair correlations between wave vectors of virtually emitted phonons are taken into account, we have obtained better upper bounds to the polaron ground-state energy than have been available heretofore for $\ensuremath{\alpha}\ensuremath{\le}3.5$. The same variational trial functions are also used to obtain lower bounds for $\ensuremath{\alpha}\ensuremath{\le}2.5$. These lower bounds, although not completely rigorous, represent a considerable improvement over the Lieb-Yamazaki values, which are, to the author's knowledge, the only other lower bounds in the literature. The variational ansatz chosen is also suitable for practical calculations of the polaron effective mass.