Quantum Many-Body Theories Applied to Lattice Quantum Spin Systems

Daisuke Yamamoto

Mean-field approaches provide a qualitative understanding of the behavior of interacting many-body systems. Weiss's molecular-field theory, in particular, has been successfully applied to the studies of various phenomena. However, since local fluctuations from the average are ignored, this simple mean-field theory does not work for systems whose distinctive behavior is caused by fluctuation effects. In the present work, we introduce a new cluster mean-field approach, which we refer to as the correlated cluster mean-field approach, and the applications to classical and quantum spin systems are demonstrated. We divide the lattice sites into clusters consisting of several sites and include the effect of cluster-cluster correlations into the effective fields acting on the spins. In doing so, the effect of spin fluctuations can be taken into account, and our method gives qualitatively and even semiquantitatively correct results for both classical and quantum systems.

R. F. Bishop, Yang Xian

R. F. Bishop

R. F. Bishop, DAMIAN J. J. FARNELL

Strongly interacting quantum spin–lattice models exhibit a wide variety of phases with diverse and subtle magnetic ordering properties. Their detailed description within a unified microscopic framework poses a real challenge for the many-body theorist. By specific application to the spin-½ anisotropic Heisenberg model on a square lattice, we show how the ab initio coupled cluster method, which has already been very successfully applied to a wide variety of quantum many-body and field-theoretic systems, may be very efficiently and systematically implemented for spin–lattice models. Results for such local properties as the ground-state energy and sublattice magnetization are thereby obtained which are on a par with those from the best of the available alternative methods. Furthermore, we demonstrate explicitly how the coupled cluster method now also provides an effective and fully microscopic tool to yield systematic and accurate estimates of the zero-temperature quantum phase transition boundaries between states of different quantum order, as well as of the critical behaviour of the system in the vicinity of the transition points.

Yang Xian

We present an alternative approach based on a diagrammatic technique to the recently proposed variational coupled-cluster method. We apply this method to quantum antiferromagnetic bipartite lattices. In our analysis, infinite resummations of diagrams can be done in a straightforward manner. One such resummation reproduces spin-wave theory (SWT). Approximations beyond SWT can also be easily made. Interestingly, one such approximation produces a convergent, precise number for the order parameter of the one-dimensional isotropic model, in contrast to the well-known divergence of SWT; it also produces improved results for the two-dimensional square-lattice system. We also discuss relations and a possible combination of our approach with other established many-body theories.

Jesús Navarro, A. Polls