This chapter discusses quantum theory of many-fermion systems. Various correlation functions and their related physical measurements are calculated for free fermion systems at both zero and non-zero temperatures. It is pointed out that many free fermion systems resemble critical points which are on verge to change into other qualitatively different phases. The topological properties of a filled band and its relation to quantized Hall conductance are also discussed. The chapter also stresses that a many-fermion system in two and higher dimension is not really a local quantum system. In one dimension, a many-fermion system can be viewed as a local quantum system, and the Jordan–Wigner transformation is introduced to transform a 1D many-fermion system to a 1D local many-boson system. The chapter points out that the Fermi/Bose statistics are a dynamical property of the hopping Hamiltonian and come from the statistical hopping algebra.
This chapter discusses quantum theory of many-fermion systems. Various correlation functions and their related physical measurements are calculated for free fermion systems at both zero and non-zero temperatures. It is pointed out that many free fermion systems resemble critical points which are on verge to change into other qualitatively different phases. The topological properties of a filled band and its relation to quantized Hall conductance are also discussed. The chapter also stresses that a many-fermion system in two and higher dimension is not really a local quantum system. In one dimension, a many-fermion system can be viewed as a local quantum system, and the Jordan–Wigner transformation is introduced to transform a 1D many-fermion system to a 1D local many-boson system. The chapter points out that the Fermi/Bose statistics are a dynamical property of the hopping Hamiltonian and come from the statistical hopping algebra.
This chapter discusses the technique of bosonization for studying systems of interacting fermions in one dimension. It reviews the low-energy properties of Fermi and Luttinger liquids and presents some of the relations between bosonic and fermionic operators in one dimension. The chapter explores these relations to calculate the correlation functions and the renormalization group properties of various operators for a system of spinless fermions. It explains the methods of bosonization to study the Heisenberg antiferromagnetic spin 1/2 chain, the Hubbard model in one dimension and transport in clean quantum wires and in the presence of isolated impurities. The basic idea of bosonization is that there are certain objects which can be calculated either in a fermionic theory or in a bosonic theory, and the two calculations give the same answer. The chapter also discusses another application of bosonization, which is to study transport, in particular the DC conductivity in one-dimensional wires of interacting fermions.
The dynamical critical exponent is introduced. The phase diagram and the phase transitions in the Bose–Hubbard model of interacting bosons on a lattice are determined. The concept of quantum fluctuations is introduced on the example of an interacting superfluid, and finally the special scaling of conductivity is discussed. Dynamical critical exponent The finite temperature phase transitions studied in previous chapters are the result of the competition between the entropy and the energy terms in the free energy: the weight of entropy increases with temperature, and ultimately destroys the order that may be existing in the system. A sharp phase transition between two phases exhibiting qualitatively different correlations may, however, occur even at zero temperature, by varying a coupling constant in the Hamiltonian. The transition then corresponds to a non-analyticity of the energy of the ground state. A simple example is provided by the interacting bosons, where the superfluid transition may be brought about by tuning the chemical potential at T = 0. Such T = 0 phase transitions are called quantum phase transitions , and will be the subject of the present chapter. In general, a quantum phase transition may lie at the end of a line of thermal phase transitions, as in the bosonic example mentioned above. It is possible, however, that the system may not even have an ordered state at finite temperatures, but still exhibits a quantum critical point. Two different situations are depicted in Fig. 8.1. Examples of such phase diagrams are provided by the system of interacting bosons which will be discussed in Sections 8.2 and 8.3.
Abstract In this chapter we will study the continuum limit formulation of the two-dimensional Ising model, starting from the hamiltonian limit of its transfer matrix. We will first derive the quantum hamiltonian of the model and then we will study its most important properties, such as the duality transformation. This symmetry involves the order and disorder operators and we will clarify their physical interpretation. Afterwards, we will see how to diagonalize the quantum hamiltonian by means of particular fermionic fields. The operator mapping between the order/disorder operators and the fermionic fields is realized by the so-called Wigner–Jordan transformation: this brings the original hamiltonian to a quadratic form in the creation and annihilation operators of the fermions. The determination of the spectrum is then obtained by a Bogoliubov transformation, a technique extremely useful also in other contexts, such as superconductivity phenomena. In the limit in which the lattice spacing goes to zero, the Ising model becomes a theory of free Majorana fermions. They satisfy a relativistic dispersion relation and their mass is a direct measurement of the displacement of the temperature from the critical value.
We discuss the momentum-space topology of 3+1 and 2+1 strongly correlated fermionic systems. For the 3+1 systems the important universality class is determined by the topologically stable Fermi points in momentum space. In the extreme limit of low energy the condensed matter system of this universality class acquires all the symmetries, which we know today in high energy physics: Lorentz invariance, gauge invariance, general covariance, etc. The chiral fermions as well as gauge bosons and gravity field arise as fermionic and bosonic collective modes of the system. This introduces the conceptual similarity between such condensed matter and the quantum vacuum of Standard Model, which also contains the Fermi point. For the 2+1 fermionic systems the momentum space topology gives rise to the quantization of different physical parameters, such as Hall conducivity and spin-Hall conductivity, and to quantum phase transitions with the abrupt change of the momentum-space topology. The combined p-space and r-space topology determines in particular the topology of the energy spectrum of fermion zero modes living within the topological defects; fermionic charges of the topologically nontrivial extended objects; axial anomaly; etc.
Rationally independent free fermions are those where sums of single-particle energies multiplied by arbitrary rational coefficients vanish only if the coefficients are all zero. This property guaranties that they have no degeneracies in the many-body spectrum and gives them relaxation properties more similar to those of generic systems. Using classic results from number theory we provide minimal examples of rationally independent free fermion models for every system size in one dimension. This is accomplished by considering a free fermion model with a chemical potential, and hopping terms corresponding to all the divisors of the number of sites, each one with an incommensurate complex amplitude. We then move on to discuss the many-body spectral statistics for these models. Indeed, because of their nondegenerate spectrum, these systems are potentially compatible with Poissonian spectral statistics, as opposed to most noninteracting systems. We show that local probes-like the ratio of consecutive level spacings-look very similar to what is expected for the Poisson statistics. We however demonstrate that free fermion models can never have Poisson statistics with an analysis of the moments of the spectral form factor.
This chapter addresses phase transitions and dynamic scaling occurring in systems comprised of interacting indistinguishable quantum particles, for which entanglement correlations are crucial. It first describes how the dynamics (in real time) and thermodynamics (in imaginary time) of quantum many-particle Hamiltonians can be mapped onto field theories based on coherent-state path integrals. While bosons are described by complex-valued fields, fermions are represented by anticommuting Grassmann variables. Since quantum-mechanical systems are of inherently dynamical nature, the corresponding field theory action entails d + 1 dimensions, with time playing a special role. For Hamiltonians that incorporate only two-particle interactions, we can make contact with the previously studied Langevin equations, yet with effectively multiplicative rather than additive noise. As an illustration, this formalism is applied to deduce fundamental properties of weakly interacting boson superfluids. Whereas Landau–Ginzburg theory already provides a basic hydrodynamic description, the Gaussian approximation allows the computation of density correlations, the Bose condensate fraction, and the normal- and superfluid densities from the particle current correlations. We next establish that quantum fluctuations are typically irrelevant for thermodynamic critical phenomena, provided that T c > 0, and readily extend finite-size scaling theory to the imaginary time axis to arrive at general scaling forms for the free energy. Intriguing novel phenomena emerge in the realm of genuine quantum phase transitions at zero temperature, governed by other control parameters such as particle density, interaction or disorder strengths.