Essential contents on quantization of fields and second quantization, which are necessary for undergraduate and graduate level, are presented in this chapter. An innovative approach is used for the presentations and the discussions on field quantization and second quantization for systems of Bosons and Fermions. The chapter covers field operators, the procedure of second quantization and its use for the Schrödinger equation for both Bosons and Fermions, matrix representation of Fermionic operators, number operators for both Bosons and Fermions, and systems of weakly interacting Bosons and Fermions. A good number of solved examples and unsolved exercises clarify the basic concepts behind quantization of fields and second quantization.
Essential contents on quantization of fields and second quantization, which are necessary for undergraduate and graduate level, are presented in this chapter. An innovative approach is used for the presentations and the discussions on field quantization and second quantization for systems of Bosons and Fermions. The chapter covers field operators, the procedure of second quantization and its use for the Schrödinger equation for both Bosons and Fermions, matrix representation of Fermionic operators, number operators for both Bosons and Fermions, and systems of weakly interacting Bosons and Fermions. A good number of solved examples and unsolved exercises clarify the basic concepts behind quantization of fields and second quantization.
In this chapter we describe a technique to deal with identical particles that is called second quantization . Despite being a technique, second quantization helps a lot in understanding physics. One can learn and endlessly repeat newspaper-style statements particles are fields , fields are particles without grasping their meaning. Second quantization brings these concepts to an operational level. Since the procedure of second quantization is slightly different for fermions and bosons, we have to treat the two cases separately. We start with considering a system of identical bosons, and introduce creation and annihilation operators (CAPs) that change the number of particles in a given many-particle state, thereby connecting different states in Fock space. We show how to express occupation numbers in terms of CAPs, and then get to the heart of the second quantization: the commutation relations for the bosonic CAPs. As a next step, we construct field operators out of the CAPs and spend quite some time (and energy) presenting the physics of the particles in terms of these field operators. Only afterward, do we explain why all this activity has been called second quantization. In Section 3.4 we then present the same procedure for fermions, and we mainly focus on what is different as compared to bosons. The formalism of second quantization is summarized in Table 3.1.
This chapter introduces and applies the method of second quantization, a technique that underpins the formulation of quantum many-particle theories. Second quantization formalism treats systems of bosons or fermions with a fixed or variable number of particles in a unified way. The chapter reviews the key aspects of this formalism. The formalism of second quantization treats systems of bosons with a fixed or variable number of particles in a unified manner. In many physical processes, the particle number does change. Different quantum operators are expressed most naturally in different representations, which make basis changes an essential issue in quantum physics. Quantum field theory is a universal tool that has applications ranging from atomic, molecular, and particle physics to condensed matter and statistical physics as well as modern quantum chemistry. The fundamental difference between classical and quantum mechanics relates to the concept of indistinguishability of identical particles.
In this chapter, we derived some elements of quantum mechanics, which are essential for the further development of our theory: the momentum of a system of Fermions in the second quantization, the coordinate and momentum of a harmonic oscillator as a unique operator at two different moments of time, Boson and Fermion operator algebra, coherent states, the electron-field interaction, the quantization of the electromagnetic field, Boson and Fermion distributions, and densities of states in a degenerate, or a non-degenerate system of Fermions. Our starting point is the wave nature of a quantum particle, the Hamiltonian equations were obtained as group velocities in the two conjugate spaces of the wave, of the coordinates and of the momentum. In this way, the Schr¨odinger equation and the electron-field potential of interaction are obtained from quantum equations generated by the particle wave function.
Abstract Chapter 2 provides a review of pertinent aspects of the quantum mechanics of systems composed of many particles. It focuses on the foundations of quantum many-particle physics, the many-particle Hilbert spaces to describe large assemblies of interacting systems composed of Bosons or Fermions, which lead to the versatile formalism of second quantization as a convenient and eminently practical language ubiquitous in the mathematical formulation of the theory of many-particle systems of quantum matter. The main objects in which the formalism of second quantization is expressed are the Bosonic or Fermionic creation and annihilation operators that become, in the position basis, the quantum field operators.
These lecture notes originate from a one-semester course on the mathematical foundations of second quantization, first given at the Department of Physics of the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in the Winter Semester 2025/26 to a mixed audience of physics and mathematics students. Their guiding thread is a class of physical models: spin-boson models, describing a two-level system coupled to a boson field. After summarizing the necessary background on unbounded operators, up to the Kato-Rellich and KLMN theorems, and developing direct sums and tensor products of Hilbert spaces and of unbounded operators, we treat single-mode boson fields, constructing the ladder and number operators and characterizing their domains, before moving to Fock spaces, second quantization, bosonic and fermionic annihilation and creation operators, and the canonical (anti)commutation relations. Throughout, spin-boson models provide both the motivation and the test bench for the formalism: we rigorously establish their self-adjointness, solve the pure dephasing and Jaynes-Cummings models explicitly, deriving their spectra and the qubit channels they induce, show how their multimode counterparts display irreversible decoherence and decay, and, in an appendix, prove the rotating-wave approximation for the quantum Rabi model with an explicit error bound. Finally, we use the KLMN theorem to construct spin-boson models with non-normalizable form factors, and briefly discuss stronger ultraviolet divergences and the need for renormalization. Exercises with full solutions are included.
Summary of the lectures: 1. Creation and annihilation operators for the system of indistinguishable particles 1.1 The permutation group and the states of a system of indistinguishable particles 1.2 Dimension of the Hilbert space of a system of indistinguishable particles 1.3 Definition and properties of the creation and annihilation operators 1.4 TheFockspace 1.5 The representations of state vectors and operators 1.5.1 N-particlewave-functions 1.5.2 The second-quantization representation of operators 1.5.3 Examples 1.6 Evolution of operators in the Heisenberg picture 1.7 Statistical operators of indistinguishable particles 1.7.1 The averages of the s-particle operators 1.7.2 The general structure of the one-particle statistical operator 2 Quadratic Hamiltonian and the diagonalization 2.1 Diagionalization of the Hamiltonian quadratic in the fermion operators 2.2 Diagionalization of the Hamiltonian quadratic in the boson operators 2.2.1 Diagonalization of the quadratic bosonic Hamiltonian possessing a zero mode 2.3 Long range order, condensation and the Bogoliubov spectrum of weakly interacting Bose gas 2.3.1 The excitation spectrum of weakly interacting Bose gas inabox 2.3.2 The excitation spectrum of an interacting Bose gas in an externalpotential 2.4 The Jordan-Wigner transformation: fermionization of interacting 1D spin chains