The object of this thesis is to study the definition and the mathematically rigorous derivation of effective models in many body quantum mechanics. In this field, it is often impossible to compte exactly physically relevant quantities - such as the ground state energy of a system - because of the large number of degrees of freedom. Hence, introducing effective models (depending only on the local density of particles for instance) allows us to compute these quantities. Then, it remains to check that the effective model is indeed an approximation of the exact model in a macroscopic limit. Besides, in some models, some physical quantities (energy, scattering amplitude...), when computed naively, appear to be infinite. One has then to renormalize the theory in order to make these divergences (that are not observed experimentally) disappear. After putting the results of this thesis into context in the introduction, we will focus on the renormalization of a bosonic quadratic Hamiltonian on the Fock space in Chapter 2. This (formal) Hamiltonian is the sum of the second quantization of a one-particle operator and the square of a field operator, and it exhibits an ultraviolet divergence (i.e. coming from local singularities). More accurately, we will try to define a self-adjoint operator, and to show that it is the limit (in the resolvent sense) of the Hamiltonian with ultraviolet cutoff when the cutoff tends to infinity. To do so, we will first diagonalize the Hamiltonian in the regular case, using Bogoliubov transformations. Then, we will prove that the diagonalized Hamiltonian (up to a renormalization of the energy and the charge) still defines a self-adjoint, and we will show the convergence of the Hamiltonian with cut-off. In a second time, we will study the semi-classical limit of a Fermi gas, in two different scalings. In Chapter 3, we will focus on the dilute limite (i.e. with an interaction range very small compared to the typical distance between particles) of an inhomogeneous (trapped with a potential V) Fermi gas, with repulsive interactions and in three dimensions. Due to the Pauli exclusion principle, two fermions of same spin can only rarely be close enough to interact. Thus, we will consider a Fermi gas with two spin components. We will then show that the ground state energy of such a system can be approximated by a Thomas-Fermi energy (in which interactions play the role of a perturbation of the interactionless energy) in the large number of particles limit. Eventually, in Chapter 4, we will study the mean-field limit (with frequent but weak interactions) of an inhomogeneous Fermi gas, with attractive interactions and in one or two dimensions this time. Once more, we will show the convergence of the ground state energy toward a Thomas-Fermi energy. Moreover, we will also prove the convergence of the ground states. More accurately, we will show that the Husimi functions of these ground states converge to a convex combination of minimizers of the Vlasov energy.
The object of this thesis is to study the definition and the mathematically rigorous derivation of effective models in many body quantum mechanics. In this field, it is often impossible to compte exactly physically relevant quantities - such as the ground state energy of a system - because of the large number of degrees of freedom. Hence, introducing effective models (depending only on the local density of particles for instance) allows us to compute these quantities. Then, it remains to check that the effective model is indeed an approximation of the exact model in a macroscopic limit. Besides, in some models, some physical quantities (energy, scattering amplitude...), when computed naively, appear to be infinite. One has then to renormalize the theory in order to make these divergences (that are not observed experimentally) disappear. After putting the results of this thesis into context in the introduction, we will focus on the renormalization of a bosonic quadratic Hamiltonian on the Fock space in Chapter 2. This (formal) Hamiltonian is the sum of the second quantization of a one-particle operator and the square of a field operator, and it exhibits an ultraviolet divergence (i.e. coming from local singularities). More accurately, we will try to define a self-adjoint operator, and to show that it is the limit (in the resolvent sense) of the Hamiltonian with ultraviolet cutoff when the cutoff tends to infinity. To do so, we will first diagonalize the Hamiltonian in the regular case, using Bogoliubov transformations. Then, we will prove that the diagonalized Hamiltonian (up to a renormalization of the energy and the charge) still defines a self-adjoint, and we will show the convergence of the Hamiltonian with cut-off. In a second time, we will study the semi-classical limit of a Fermi gas, in two different scalings. In Chapter 3, we will focus on the dilute limite (i.e. with an interaction range very small compared to the typical distance between particles) of an inhomogeneous (trapped with a potential V) Fermi gas, with repulsive interactions and in three dimensions. Due to the Pauli exclusion principle, two fermions of same spin can only rarely be close enough to interact. Thus, we will consider a Fermi gas with two spin components. We will then show that the ground state energy of such a system can be approximated by a Thomas-Fermi energy (in which interactions play the role of a perturbation of the interactionless energy) in the large number of particles limit. Eventually, in Chapter 4, we will study the mean-field limit (with frequent but weak interactions) of an inhomogeneous Fermi gas, with attractive interactions and in one or two dimensions this time. Once more, we will show the convergence of the ground state energy toward a Thomas-Fermi energy. Moreover, we will also prove the convergence of the ground states. More accurately, we will show that the Husimi functions of these ground states converge to a convex combination of minimizers of the Vlasov energy.
This thesis is about the derivation of effective mean field equations and their next-order corrections starting from nonrelativistic many-body quantum theory. Mean field equations provide an approximate ansatz for the description of interacting many-particle systems. In this ansatz the interaction between the particles is replaced by a self-consistent external potential leading to an effective one-body description of the many-particle system. Next-order corrections provide an approximation which goes one step further and tries to capture also subleading effects that are not resolved by the mean field ansatz. We present mathematical proofs for the validity of such effective theories for different models that are motivated, e.g., from the theory of ultracold atoms (the bosonic Hartree equation and the corresponding Bogoliubov theory) and from plasma physics (the motion of a tracer particle through a degenerate and dense electron gas). Starting from a many-body Schrödinger equation, our goal is to show that the solutions converge in a particular limit to the solutions to an effective mean field equation and its next-order corrections. After a short introduction and a summary in Chapter one, we present the main part of this work in three self-contained chapters. In Chapter two we analyze the dynamics of a large number N of nonrelativistic bosons in the weak coupling limit, i.e., for a coupling constant g_N=1/N. It is well known that in the limit of infinite particle number, the Hartree equation emerges as an effective one-particle theory of the Bose gas. This is closely related to the remarkable physical phenomenon of Bose-Einstein condensation at low temperature, namely that the majority of particles in a Bose gas occupies the same copy of a single one-particle quantum state. Our emphasis lies in the description of the few particles that fluctuate around the Bose-Einstein condensate. We show convergence of the fully interacting dynamics to an auxiliary time evolution in the norm of the N-particle space. This result allows us to prove several other assertions. Among other things, it is used to derive the Hartree equation with optimal speed of convergence 1/N for initial states that are close to ground states of interacting systems and also to prove convergence of the N-particle solution towards a time evolution obtained from the Bogoliubov Hamiltonian on Fock space. Chapter three is about the low energy properties of the weakly interacting homogeneous Bose gas. Here, we derive a novel estimate for low energy eigenfunctions stating that the probability for finding l particles out of their total number N not in the condensate is exponentially small in the number l. Using this bound, we then prove that the ground state wave function of the microscopic model satisfies certain quasifree type properties. The exponential decay is moreover used to provide an alternative proof for the validity of Bogoliubov's approximation for the low-lying energy eigenvalues. Bogoliubov theory states that the excitation energies of the Bose gas are given by excitations of free quasiparticles obeying an effective energy-momentum dispersion relation which is linear for small momentum. The linearity of the effective dispersion relation is an essential ingredient for the explanation of the superfluid character of the Bose gas. In Chapter four we study the time evolution of a single particle coupled through a pair potential to a dense and homogeneous ideal Fermi gas in two spatial dimensions. This type of model is well known in plasma physics where it is used to describe the energy loss of ions moving through a dense and degenerate electron gas. We analyze the model for a coupling parameter g=1 and prove closeness of the time evolution to an effective dynamics for large densities of the gas and for long time scales of the order of some power of the density. The effective dynamics is generated by the free Hamiltonian with a large but constant energy shift. To leading order, this energy shift is given by the spatially homogeneous mean field potential produced by the gas particles, whereas at next-to-leading order, one has to consider an additional correction to the mean field energy which is due to so-called recollision processes.
This thesis investigates the rigorous derivation of non-linear effective equations describing the time evolution of Bose-Einstein condensation from the N-particle linear Schrödinger equation, focusing on the one-particle reduced density matrix. The first chapter outlines the mathematical framework of many-body quantum mechanics, including the Fock space formalism. The second chapter studies the mean-field regime, proving that the condensed state converges to the non-linear Hartree equation by analyzing fluctuation dynamics to quantify the convergence rate. The third chapter addresses the physically realistic but mathematically challenging Gross-Pitaevskii regime, characterized by rare but strong interactions. Here, Bogoliubov transformations are used to capture crucial microscopic short-scale correlations, allowing for a quantitative derivation of the cubic non-linear Schrödinger equation. While the preceding chapters focus exclusively on repulsive interactions, the fourth chapter explores the focusing case with attractive potentials, which can lead to finite-time blow-up. Operating in an intermediate scaling regime, the effective focusing cubic non-linear Schrödinger equation is rigorously derived. Since the negative energy cannot bound many-body fluctuations, convergence is proven by approximating the dynamics via a quadratic Hamiltonian, in the spirit of Bogoliubov theory, and avoiding Grönwall estimates through the analysis of a coupled system of one-body linear equations for the one-particle density matrices.
Définition et dérivation rigoureuse de modèles effectifs en mécanique quantique à N corps L'objet de cette thèse est d'étudier la définition et la dérivation mathématiquement rigoureuse de modèles effectifs en mécanique quantique à N corps. En effet, dans ce domaine, il est souvent impossible de calculer de manière exacte des quantités physiquement intéressantes, comme l'énergie fondamentale d'un système, à cause du nombre important de degrés de liberté. Ainsi, l'introduction de modèles effectifs, dépendant par exemple uniquement de la densité locale en particules, permet de calculer ces quantités. Il reste alors à vérifier que le modèle effectif est bien une approximation du modèle exact dans une limite macroscopique, c'est à dire à grand nombre de particules. Par ailleurs, dans certains modèles, certaines quantités physiques (énergie, amplitude de diffusion...) calculées naïvement semblent infinies. Il faut alors renormaliser la théorie, c'est à dire faire disparaître ces divergences (qui ne sont pas observées expérimentalement). Après avoir replacé les résultats de cette thèse dans leur contexte dans l'introduction, on s'intéressera à la renormalisation d'un Hamiltonien bosonique quadratique sur l'espace de Fock -- composé de la somme de la seconde quantification d'un opérateur à une particule et du carré d'un opérateur de champ -- présentant une divergence ultraviolette (venant de singularités locales donc) dans le Chapitre 2. Plus précisément, on cherchera à définir un opérateur auto-adjoint et à montrer qu'il est, au sens des résolvantes, la limite du Hamiltonien avec troncature ultraviolette quand cette troncature tend vers l'infini. Pour cela, on commencera par diagonaliser le Hamiltonien dans le cas régulier, à l'aide de transformations de Bogolioubov. On pourra ensuite montrer que le Hamiltonien diagonalisé (à renormalisation de l'énergie et de la charge près) définit toujours un opérateur auto-adjoint, et montrer la convergence du Hamiltonien avec troncature. Dans un second temps, on étudiera la limite semi-classique de gaz de fermions dans deux régimes différents. Dans le Chapitre 3, on s'intéressera à la limite diluée (c'est-à-dire avec une portée d'interaction très petite devant la distance typique entre particules) d'un gaz de fermions inhomogène (car piégé par un potentiel V), avec des interactions répulsives et en trois dimensions. Du fait du principe d'exclusion de Pauli, deux fermions de même spin ne peuvent que très rarement se trouver assez proches pour interagir, on considérera donc un gaz de fermions à deux composantes de spin. On montrera alors que l'énergie fondamentale d'un tel système peut être approchée, dans la limite grand nombre de particules, par une énergie de type Thomas Fermi, où les interactions jouent le rôle d'une perturbation de l'énergie sans interaction. Ensuite, dans le Chapitre 4, on passera à la limite de champ-moyen (interactions fréquentes mais faibles) d'un gaz de fermions, toujours inhomogène, mais pour des interactions attractives, et en une ou deux dimensions. Là aussi, on montrera la convergence de l'énergie fondamentale vers une énergie de Thomas-Fermi, mais on prouvera également la convergence des états fondamentaux. Plus précisément, on montrera que leurs fonctions de Husimi convergent vers une combinaison convexe de minimiseurs de l'énergie de Vlasov.
The goal of this thesis is to provide a mathematical rigorous derivation of the Schrödinger-Klein-Gordon equations, the Maxwell-Schrödinger equations and the defocusing cubic nonlinear Schrödinger equation in two dimensions. We study the time evolution of the Nelson model (with ultraviolet cutoff) in a limit where the number N of charged particles gets large while the coupling of each particle to the radiation field is of order N^{−1/2}. At time zero it is assumed that almost all charges are in the same one-body state (a Bose-Einstein condensate) and that the radiation field is close to a coherent state. We show the persistence of condensation over time and prove that the time evolution is approximately described by the Schrödinger-Klein-Gordon system of equations in the large N limit. Subsequently, we consider the spinless Pauli-Fierz Hamiltonian which models the interaction between charged bosons and the quantized electromagnetic field. We discuss the limit previously described and prove that the time evolution is approximated by the Maxwell-Schrödinger equations. To our knowledge, this is the first rigorous result concerning a mean-field limit of the Pauli-Fierz Hamiltonian. We then turn to the evolution of Bose-Einstein condensates in two dimensions and consider N bosons which interact by a repulsive two-body potential. The interaction is given either by N^{−1+2β}V(N^{β}x) with β∈R^{+}_{0} or by e^{2N}V(e^{N}x), for some spherical symmetric, positive and compactly supported V∈L_{∞}(R^{2},R). We prove that the dynamics is approximated by the defocusing two-dimensional cubic nonlinear Schrödinger equation in the large N limit. In case of the exponential scaling, we show that a short-scale correlation structure affects the dynamics of the condensate. This is the first rigorous derivation that considers an exponential scaling of the interaction. All derivations rely on a method developed by Pickl in [Lett. Math. Phys. 97(2), 151–164 (2011)]. The first two results are obtained by an extension of the method to systems which interact with quantized radiation fields. The latter is derived by an appropriate adaption of the proof in three space dimensions [Rev. Math. Phys., 27, 1550005 (2015)]. The crucial insight to derive the Maxwell-Schrödinger equations is to restrict the class of many-body wave functions to a subspace of states whose energy per particle only fluctuates little around the energy functional of the Maxwell-Schrödinger system. To derive the two-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii equation it is essential to define a measure of condensation which properly incorporates the correlations that arise from the exponential scaling of the interaction. This thesis is based on the preprints [54, 47].
This thesis proves certain results concerning an important question in non-equilibrium quantum statistical mechanics which is the derivation of effective evolution equations approximating the dynamics of a system of large number of bosons initially at equilibrium (ground state at very low temperatures). The dynamics of such systems are governed by the time-dependent linear many-body Schroedinger equation from which it is typically difficult to extract useful information due to the number of particles being large. We will study quantitatively (i.e. with explicit bounds on the error) how a suitable one particle non-linear Schroedinger equation arises in the mean field limit as number of particles N → ∞ and how the appropriate corrections to the mean field will provide better approximations of the exact dynamics. In the first part of this thesis we consider the evolution of N bosons, where N is large, with two-body interactions of the form N³ᵝv(Nᵝ⋅), 0≤β≤1. The parameter β measures the strength and the range of interactions. We compare the exact evolution with an approximation which considers the evolution of a mean field coupled with an appropriate description of pair excitations, see [18,19] by Grillakis-Machedon-Margetis. We extend the results for 0 ≤ β < 1/3 in [19, 20] to the case of β < 1/2 and obtain an error bound of the form p(t)/Nᵅ, where α>0 and p(t) is a polynomial, which implies a specific rate of convergence as N → ∞. In the second part, utilizing estimates of the type discussed in the first part, we compare the exact evolution with the mean field approximation in the sense of marginals. We prove that the exact evolution is close to the approximate in trace norm for times of the order o(1)√N compared to log(o(1)N) as obtained in Chen-Lee-Schlein [6] for the Hartree evolution. Estimates of similar type are obtained for stronger interactions as well.
This dissertation concerns the quantum many-body problem, which is the problem of predicting the properties of systems of several quantum particles from the first principles of quantum mechanics. Included under this umbrella are various problems of fundamental importance in quantum chemistry, condensed matter physics, and materials science. Of particular interest is the electronic structure problem, the problem of determining the state of the electrons in a system with fixed atomic nuclei. Since direct numerical solution of the many-body Schrödinger equation is intractable even for systems of moderate size, a diverse array of approximate methods has been developed. The broad goals of this dissertation are to improve the mathematical understanding of certain widely-used approximations, as well as to propose new methods. Roughly speaking, we consider three (overlapping) categories of methods: Green's function methods, embedding methods, and variational methods.One can understand Green's function methods in terms of many-body perturbation theory, which computes series expansions of physical quantities about a non-interacting reference system. These expansions can be expressed graphically in terms of Feynman diagrams, which can in turn be reorganized, in some cases, into an expansion in terms of so-called bold diagrams. Green's function methods can be specified by choosing a subset of bold diagrams to approximate the sum. At the same time, such methods can be understood in terms of an object known as the Luttinger-Ward (LW) functional, which admits a representation in terms of the bold diagrams. Many aspects of these constructions are purely formal, and indeed the existence of the fermionic LW functional as a single-valued functional has recently been called into question. To contribute to the understanding of these issues, we provide rigorous proofs of the combinatorial construction and analytic interpretation of the bold diagrams in the simplified setting of a classical field theory. In this setting we also provide a rigorous non-perturbative construction of the LW functional via convex duality and prove several key properties, including continuity up to the boundary of its domain and asymptotics in the limit of large interaction.Quantum embedding methods, meanwhile, view a large system as being composed of smaller fragments that are treated with high accuracy and embedded in the larger system in a mutually consistent way. Inspired by a connection between the boundary analysis of the LW functional and embedding, we perform similar analysis for the 1-RDM theory for fermionic systems, which is also developed via convex duality, illustrating a relation to fermionic embedding methods such as the density matrix embedding theory (DMET).Another embedding method of note is the dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT), which is at the same time a Green's function method that can be understood in terms of the LW functional. DMFT relies on the solution of impurity problems, which specify the embedding of an interacting system into a non-interacting bath. Underlying DMFT is a result about the sparsity pattern of the self-energy matrix for impurity problems, which to our knowledge has not been proved in the literature. We provide a rigorous proof of this result in various classical and quantum settings. We go on to investigate the fermionic DMFT in depth, identifying the key mathematical structures that appear in the algorithmic loop for solving it and using these to prove the well-posedness of this loop, in a certain sense.Finally, we introduce a suite of new approaches to the quantum many-body problem that provide variational lower bounds to the ground-state energy. These methods, which combine the themes of convexity and embedding, are based on novel convex relaxations of the variational principles for the ground-state energies of many-body systems. To begin, we recover a second-quantized version of the formalism of strictly correlated electrons (SCE), which yields an exact expression for the exchange-correlation functional in Kohn-Sham density functional theory in the limit of infinite Coulomb repulsion in terms of the solution of a multi-marginal optimal transport problem. We introduce a semidefinite relaxation method for approximately solving this problem and obtaining a lower bound for the ground-state energy. The ideas underlying this relaxation are generalized considerably, outside the context of SCE, to yield much tighter lower bounds, which we validate numerically for both quantum spin systems and fermionic systems. We also describe how these relaxation methods can be interpreted as embedding methods via convex duality.