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The Semiclassical Propagator in Fermionic Fock Space

Thomas Engl, Plößl, Peter, Urbina, Juan Diego, Klaus Richter

Published Jan 1, 2014• 17 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Abstract We present a rigorous derivation of a semiclas-sical propagator for anticommuting (fermionic) degrees of freedom, starting from an exact representation in terms of Grassmann variables. As a key feature of our approach the anticommuting variables are integrated out exactly, and an exact path integral representation of the fermionic propaga-tor in terms of commuting variables is constructed. Since our approach is not based on auxiliary (Hubbard-Stratonovich) fields, it surpasses the calculation of fermionic determinants yielding a standard form D [ψ,ψ∗]eiR[ψ,ψ∗] with real ac-tions for the propagator. These two features allow us to pro-vide a rigorous definition of the classical limit of interacting fermionic fields and therefore to achieve the long-standing goal of a theoretically sound construction of a semiclassical van Vleck-Gutzwiller propagator in fermionic Fock space. As an application, we use our propagator to investigate how the different universality classes (orthogonal, unitary and symplectic) affect generic many-body interference effects in the transition probabilities between Fock states of interact-ing fermionic systems.

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Abstract We present a rigorous derivation of a semiclas-sical propagator for anticommuting (fermionic) degrees of freedom, starting from an exact representation in terms of Grassmann variables. As a key feature of our approach the anticommuting variables are integrated out exactly, and an exact path integral representation of the fermionic propaga-tor in terms of commuting variables is constructed. Since our approach is not based on auxiliary (Hubbard-Stratonovich) fields, it surpasses the calculation of fermionic determinants yielding a standard form D [ψ,ψ∗]eiR[ψ,ψ∗] with real ac-tions for the propagator. These two features allow us to pro-vide a rigorous definition of the classical limit of interacting fermionic fields and therefore to achieve the long-standing goal of a theoretically sound construction of a semiclassical van Vleck-Gutzwiller propagator in fermionic Fock space. As an application, we use our propagator to investigate how the different universality classes (orthogonal, unitary and symplectic) affect generic many-body interference effects in the transition probabilities between Fock states of interact-ing fermionic systems.
We present a semiclassical approach to many-body quantum propagation in terms of coherent sums over quantum amplitudes associated with the solutions of corresponding classical nonlinear wave equations. This approach adequately describes interference effects in the many-body space of interacting bosonic systems. The main quantity of interest, the transition amplitude between Fock states when the dynamics is driven by both single-particle contributions and many-body interactions of similar magnitude, is non-perturbatively constructed in the spirit of Gutzwiller's derivation of the van Vleck propagator from the path integral representation of the time evolution operator, but lifted to the space of symmetrized many-body states. Effects beyond mean-field, here representing the classical limit of the theory, are semiclassically described by means of interfering amplitudes where the action and stability of the classical solutions enter. In this way, a genuinely many-body echo phenomenon, coherent backscattering in Fock space, is presented arising due to coherent quantum interference between classical solutions related by time reversal.
During the last decades, semiclassical techniques for single particle systems have been successfully developed, to the point that they describe the universal and reproducible quantum fluctuations characteristic of quantum systems with chaotic classical limit. By now they not only give a qualitative and intuitive picture about interference, but also yield quantitatively good results. Motivated by this story of success, the aim of this thesis was to first of all rigorously deduce a semiclassical theory for many-body systems in Fock space from path integrals, thus pushing the work of John Hasbrouck Van Vleck, Richard Feynman, Martin Charles Gutzwiller and Michael Victor Berry to the next level. The central object in this development is the propagator in Fock basis, for which a path integral in complex variables has to be found, from which the corresponding classical theory can be deduced. The main focus of attention there lies the action of the classical trajectories being real thus supporting the explicit, illustrative and manifest study of many-body interference. Then, with the help of this semiclassical propagator, universal many-body interference effects in bosonic and fermionic Fock space are studied several of which are novel predictions due to new qualitative tools developed here. The semiclassical tool for quantum fields, and the picture of many-body interference it provides, is put to test against numerical calculations. For a quantitative comparison, the loop expansion developed by Martin Sieber and Klaus Richter going beyond Michael Berry's diagonal approximation is transfered and adopted to the theory in Fock space. All our predictions then show excellent agreement with quantum mechanical simulations.
We present a semiclassical approach to many-body quantum propagation in terms of coherent sums over quantum amplitudes associated with the solutions of corresponding classical nonlinear wave equations. This approach adequately describes interference effects in the many-body space of interacting bosonic systems. The main quantity of interest, the transition amplitude between Fock states when the dynamics is driven by both single-particle contributions and many-body interactions of similar magnitude, is non-perturbatively constructed in the spirit of Gutzwiller's derivation of the van Vleck propagator from the path integral representation of the time evolution operator, but lifted to the space of symmetrized many-body states. Effects beyond mean-field, here representing the classical limit of the theory, are semiclassically described by means of interfering amplitudes where the action and stability of the classical solutions enter. In this way, a genuinely many-body echo phenomenon, coherent backscattering in Fock space, is presented arising due to coherent quantum interference between classical solutions related by time reversal.
In this work, we derived a semiclassical approximation for the matrix elements of a quantum propagator in coherent states (CS) basis that avoids complex trajectories; it only involves real ones. For that purpose, we used the symplectically invariant semiclassical Weyl propagator obtained by performing a stationary phase approximation (SPA) for the path integral in the Weyl representation. After that, for the transformation to CS representation SPA is avoided; instead a quadratic expansion of the complex exponent is used. This procedure also allows us to express the semiclassical CS propagator uniquely in terms of the classical evolution of the initial point without the need of any root search typical of van Vleck--Gutzwiller-based propagators. For the case of chaotic Hamiltonian systems, the explicit time dependence of the CS propagator has been obtained. The comparison with a realistic chaotic system that derives from a quadratic Hamiltonian, the cat map, reveals that the expression here derived is exact up to quadratic Hamiltonian systems.
In quantum systems with a classical limit, advanced semiclassical methods provide the crucial link between phase-space structures, reflecting the distinction between chaotic, mixed or integrable classical dynamics, and the corresponding quantum properties. Well established techniques dealing with ergodic wave interference in the usual semiclassical limit ℏ→0\hbar \to 0ℏ→0, where the classical limit is given by Hamiltonian mechanics of particles, constitute a now standard part of the toolkit of theoretical physics. During the last years, these ideas have been extended into the field theoretical domain of systems composed of NNN indistinguishable particles, aka quantum fields, displaying a different type of semiclassical limit ℏeff=1/N→0\hbar_{\rm eff}=1/N \to 0ℏeff​=1/N→0 and accounting for genuine many-body quantum interference. The foundational concept behind this idea of many-body interference, the many-body version of the van Vleck-Gutzwillers semiclassical propagator, is explained in detail. Based on this the corresponding semiclassical many-body theory is reviewed. It provides a unified framework for understanding a variety of quantum chaotic phenomena addressed, including random-matrix spectral correlations in many-body systems, the universal morphology of many-body eigenstates, interference effects kin to mesoscopic weak localization, and the key to the scrambling of many-body correlations characterized by out-of-time-order correlators.