High-temperature virial expansion is a powerful tool in equilibrium statistical mechanics. In this paper we generalize this method to the study of nonequilibrium dynamics based on contour Green's functions and present the diagrammatic rules to calculate the virial expansion coefficients. As an application of our theory, we recover the dynamics of a Bose gas quenched from noninteracting to finite interaction and obtain analytically the long-time limit of the momentum distribution function of the gas, consistent with previous numerical results.
High-temperature virial expansion is a powerful tool in equilibrium statistical mechanics. In this paper we generalize this method to the study of nonequilibrium dynamics based on contour Green's functions and present the diagrammatic rules to calculate the virial expansion coefficients. As an application of our theory, we recover the dynamics of a Bose gas quenched from noninteracting to finite interaction and obtain analytically the long-time limit of the momentum distribution function of the gas, consistent with previous numerical results.
High temperature virial expansion is a powerful tool in equilibrium statistical mechanics. In this Letter we generalize the high temperature virial expansion approach to treat far-from-equilibrium quench dynamics. As an application of our framework, we study the dynamics of a Bose gas quenched from noninteracting to unitarity, and we compare our theoretical results with unexplained experimental results by the Cambridge group [Eigen et al., Nature 563, 221 (2018)]. We show that, during the quench dynamics, the momentum distribution decreases for the low-momentum part with k<k^{*}, and increases for high-momentum part with k>k^{*}, where k^{*} is a characteristic momentum scale separating the low- and the high-momentum regimes. We determine the universal value of k^{*}λ that agrees perfectly with the experiment, with λ being the thermal de Broglie wavelength. We also find a jump of the halfway relaxation time across k^{*}λ and the nonmonotonic behavior of energy distribution, both of which agree with the experiment. Finally, we address the issue whether the longtime steady state thermalizes or not, and we find that this state reaches a partial thermalization, namely, it thermalizes for the low-energy part with kλ≲1 but does not thermalize for the very high momentum tail with kλ≫1. Our framework can also be applied to quench dynamics in other systems.
The virial expansion method is applied within a harmonic approximation to an interacting N-body system of identical fermions. We compute the canonical partition functions for two and three particles to get the two lowest orders in the expansion. The energy spectrum is carefully interpolated to reproduce ground-state properties at low temperature and the noninteracting high-temperature limit of constant virial coefficients. This resembles the smearing of shell effects in finite systems with increasing temperature. Numerical results are discussed for the second and third virial coefficients as functions of dimension, temperature, interaction, and transition temperature between low- and high-energy limits.
We use the virial expansion to investigate the behavior of the two-component, attractive Fermi gas in the high-temperature limit, where the system smoothly evolves from weakly attractive fermions to weakly repulsive bosonic dimers as the short-range attraction is increased. We present a formalism for computing the virial coefficients that employs a diagrammatic approach to the grand potential and allows one to easily include an effective range R∗ in the interaction. In the limit where the thermal wavelength $\ensuremath{\lambda}\ensuremath{\ll}{R}^{*}$, the calculation of the virial coefficients is perturbative even at unitarity and the system resembles a weakly interacting Bose-Fermi mixture for all scattering lengths a. By interpolating from the perturbative limits $\ensuremath{\lambda}/|a|\ensuremath{\gg}1$ and ${R}^{*}/\ensuremath{\lambda}\ensuremath{\gg}1$, we estimate the value of the fourth virial coefficient at unitarity for R∗=0 and we find that it is close to the value obtained in recent experiments. We also derive the equations of state for the pressure, density, and entropy, as well as the spectral function at high temperatures.
The virial expansion characterizes the high-temperature approach to the quantum-classical crossover in any quantum many-body system. Here, we calculate the virial coefficients up to the fifth order of Fermi gases in one, two, and three dimensions, with attractive contact interactions, as relevant for a variety of applications in atomic and nuclear physics. To that end, we discretize the imaginary-time direction and calculate the relevant canonical partition functions. In coarse discretizations, we obtain analytic results featuring relationships between the interaction-induced changes $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}{b}_{3}, \mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}{b}_{4}$, and $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}{b}_{5}$ as functions of $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}{b}_{2}$, the latter being exactly known in many cases by virtue of the Beth-Uhlenbeck formula. Using automated-algebra methods, we push our calculations to progressively finer discretizations and extrapolate to the continuous-time limit. We find excellent agreement for $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}{b}_{3}$ with previous calculations in all dimensions and we formulate predictions for $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}{b}_{4}$ and $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}{b}_{5}$ in one and two dimensions. We also provide, for a range of couplings, the subspace contributions $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}{b}_{31}, \mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}{b}_{22}, \mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}{b}_{41}$, and $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}{b}_{32}$, which determine the equation of state and static response of polarized systems at high temperature. As a performance check, we compare the density equation of state and Tan contact with quantum Monte Carlo calculations, diagrammatic approaches, and experimental data where available. Finally, we apply Pad\'e and Pad\'e-Borel resummation methods to extend the usefulness of the virial coefficients to approach and in some cases go beyond the unit-fugacity point.
The Green's function method is one of the most powerful and versatile formalisms in physics, and its nonequilibrium version has proved invaluable in many research fields. This book provides a unique, self-contained introduction to nonequilibrium many-body theory. Starting with basic quantum mechanics, the authors introduce the equilibrium and nonequilibrium Green's function formalisms within a unified framework called the contour formalism. The physical content of the contour Green's functions and the diagrammatic expansions are explained with a focus on the time-dependent aspect. Every result is derived step-by-step, critically discussed and then applied to different physical systems, ranging from molecules and nanostructures to metals and insulators. With an abundance of illustrative examples, this accessible book is ideal for graduate students and researchers who are interested in excited state properties of matter and nonequilibrium physics.
In this article, we present a concise and self-contained introduction to nonequilibrium statistical mechanics with quantum field theory by considering an ensemble of interacting identical bosons or fermions as an example. Readers are assumed to be familiar with the Matsubara formalism of equilibrium statistical mechanics such as Feynman diagrams, the proper self-energy, and Dyson's equation. The aims are threefold: (i) to explain the fundamentals of nonequilibrium quantum field theory as simple as possible on the basis of the knowledge of the equilibrium counterpart; (ii) to elucidate the hierarchy in describing nonequilibrium systems from Dyson's equation on the Keldysh contour to the Navier-Stokes equation in fluid mechanics via quantum transport equations and the Boltzmann equation; (iii) to derive an expression of nonequilibrium entropy that evolves with time. In stage (i), we introduce nonequilibrium Green's function and the self-energy uniquely on the round-trip Keldysh contour, thereby avoiding possible confusions that may arise from defining multiple Green's functions at the very beginning. We try to present the Feynman rules for the perturbation expansion as simple as possible. In particular, we focus on the self-consistent perturbation expansion with the Luttinger-Ward thermodynamic functional, i.e., Baym's Phi-derivable approximation, which has a crucial property for nonequilibrium systems of obeying various conservation laws automatically. We also show how the two-particle correlations can be calculated within the Phi-derivable approximation, i.e., an issue of how to handle the "Bogoliubov-Born-Green-Kirkwood-Yvons (BBGKY) hierarchy".