Self-consistent linear response approximation for quantum many-body systems

U. Brandt, Hajo Leschke

Niko Säkkinen, Yang Peng, Heiko Appel +1 more

We present a Kadanoff-Baym formalism to study time-dependent phenomena for systems of interacting electrons and phonons in the framework of many-body perturbation theory. The formalism takes correctly into account effects of the initial preparation of an equilibrium state and allows for an explicit time-dependence of both the electronic and phononic degrees of freedom. The method is applied to investigate the charge neutral and non-neutral excitation spectra of a homogeneous, two-site, two-electron Holstein model. This is an extension of a previous study of the ground state properties in the Hartree (H), partially self-consistent Born (Gd) and fully self-consistent Born (GD) approximations published in Säkkinen et al. [J. Chem. Phys. 143, 234101 (2015)]. Here, the homogeneous ground state solution is shown to become unstable for a sufficiently strong interaction while a symmetry-broken ground state solution is shown to be stable in the Hartree approximation. Signatures of this instability are observed for the partially self-consistent Born approximation but are not found for the fully self-consistent Born approximation. By understanding the stability properties, we are able to study the linear response regime by calculating the density-density response function by time-propagation. This amounts to a solution of the Bethe-Salpeter equation with a sophisticated kernel. The results indicate that none of the approximations is able to describe the response function during or beyond the bipolaronic crossover for the parameters investigated. Overall, we provide an extensive discussion on when the approximations are valid and how they fail to describe the studied exact properties of the chosen model system.

Yu. B. Ivanov, Jörn Knoll, Dmitry N. Voskresensky

Irina Bostan

In this work the basic formalism of non-equilibrium Green’s functions is presented and then applied to study a Ward identity in linear response theory, namely the frequency sum-rule. It can be proven that the frequency sum-rule is satisfied when the quantities involved are calculated using perturbation theory within a conserving approximation for the self-energy. To illustrate this equality along with other properties of the response function, a numerical application that solves the Kadanoff-Baym equations for systems of Hubbard chains was used. The results showed that the frequency sum-rule was satisfied to the same extent by all the conserving approximations used as by the exact diagonalization numerical results. The density response function was analyzed diagrammatically for a series of conserving approximations for the self-energy and this demonstrated that even for a first order in perturbation theory approximation for the self-energy, the response function has a corresponding complex, third order in the perturbation diagrammatic structure.

Marek Płoszajczak, Mark J. Rhoades-Brown, M. E. Carrington

Gabriele F. Giuliani, Giovanni Vignale

Introduction The calculation of the linear response functions of an electron liquid is a very important, but obviously extremely difficult task. Even after many years of study, and in spite of much progress, a complete solution of the problem is still lacking. In preparation to the study of this difficult problem, we consider in this chapter the main response functions of the non-interacting electron gas, namely, the density–density, spin–spin, and current–current response functions, all of which can be calculated analytically. It turns out that understanding the response of the non-interacting electron gas is an essential prerequisite for understanding the richer and more complex response of the interacting liquid. Indeed, one of the most fruitful ideas in many-body physics is that the response of an interacting system can be pictured as the response of a non-interacting system to an effective self-consistent field, which depends on global properties such as the particle density, the density matrix, the current–density etc. ‥ This is true, in particular, for every dynamical mean field theory , which can be derived from the corresponding static mean field theory (such as the HF theory) with the help of the techniques introduced in Section 4.7. In the first part of this chapter we present a detailed study of the response functions of the homogeneous non-interacting electron gas in three, two, and one dimension. Electron–impurity scattering is included only at the most elementary level, and only to demonstrate its main effect, namely, the emergence of diffusion in the dynamics of density fluctuations. In the next chapter we shall present approximations for the effective self-consistent field.