Hartree-Fock variational method for fermions

Fabrizio Tafuri, C. A. Perroni, G. De Filippis

Carlos A. Jiménez-Hoyos, R. R. Rodríguez-Guzmán, Gustavo E. Scuseria

Mean-field methods such as Hartree-Fock (HF) and Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) constitute the building blocks upon which more elaborate many-body theories are based. The HF and HFB wave functions are built out of independent quasiparticles resulting from a unitary linear canonical transformation of the elementary fermion operators. Here, we discuss the possibility of allowing the HF transformation to become nonunitary. The properties of such HF vacua are discussed, as well as the evaluation of matrix elements among such states. We use a simple ansatz to demonstrate that a nonunitary transformation brings additional flexibility that can be exploited in variational approximations to many-fermion wave functions. The action of projection operators on nonunitary-based HF states is also discussed and applied, in a variation-after-projection approach, to the one-dimensional Hubbard model with periodic boundary conditions.

Hideo Fukutome

We develop a new general theory for large quantum fluctuations in a Fermion many-body system that cannot be described by fluctuations around the Hartree-Fock ground state but arises from resonance of different correlation structures. We start with an exact coherent state representation of a Fermion system on a unitary group. We show that the Hamiltonian in the coherent state representation has a close connection with the Hartree-Fock energy functional. From this, we can derive a new approximation called the resonating Hartree-Fock approximation in which a state is approximated by a superposition of non-orthogonal Slater determinants with different correlation structures. We derive the variation equations to determine a resonating Hartree-Fock wavefunction. We show that the resonance between degenerate broken symmetry Slater determinants may partially recover the symmetry. We discuss how to choose trial Slater determinants in a resonating Hartree-Fock wavefunction. We suggest that resonance of Slater determinats representing localized defects, such as solitons, polarons and breathers, produced in the long range order of the HF ground state may be the most important content of large quantum fluctuations in condensed matter systems.

Horst-Dietrich Dietze

Luca Salasnich

Norikazu Tomita

A resonating Hartree-Fock (Res-HF) method is revisited and improved by the complete spin projection for the interacting Fermion system. This method approximates a many-body wave function by the superposition of nonorthogonal Slater determinants (S-dets). The nonorthogonality of the S-dets makes it possible to describe the large quantum fluctuations efficiently, since each S-det naturally includes the full-electron-excitation effects from other S-dets. The molecular orbitals in every S-det, as well as the superposition coefficients, are variationally determined. So far, however, the spin contamination, caused by the conventional half-projection, has been a serious obstacle to obtain the accurate wave functions for large-size fermion systems, especially in the intermediate and large correlation regimes. In this paper, we apply the complete spin projection method to the Res-HF calculations. As an example, the improved Res-HF method is applied to the one-dimensional Hubbard model. It will be shown that the complete spin projection improves the Res-HF wave functions significantly. In fact, the correlation energies explained by the improved Res-HF method are better than those by the variational Monte Carlo method in all the correlation regimes. The correlation structures at arbitrary fillings are also well described by the improved Res-HF method.