Abstract The Wigner formulation of quantum mechanics is used to derive a new path integral representation of quantum density of states (DOSs). A path integral Monte Carlo approach is developed for the numerical investigation of DOSs, internal energy and spin-resolved radial distribution functions for a 2D system of strongly correlated soft-sphere fermions. The peculiarities of the DOSs and internal energy distributions depending on the hardness of the soft-sphere potential and particle density are investigated and explained. In particular, at high enough densities the DOSs rapidly tends to a constant value, as for an ideal system of 2D fermions.
Definition and formulas for harmonic oscillator coherent states and spin coherent states are reviewed in detail. The path integral formalism and its relation with the partition function of a system are also reviewed. The harmonic oscillator coherent state path integral is evaluated exactly at the discrete level and then used to find its continuum limit using various regularizations. The computation of the path integral for a particle of spin s put in a constant magnetic field is carried out using harmonic oscillator coherent states and spin coherent states, with a careful analysis of infinitesimal terms (in 1/N where N is the number of time slices) appearing in the Lagrangian. A mapping of the spin system into a CP1 model is shown explicitly. The theory of a spinless particle in the field of a magnetic monopole and its relation with the spin system are explained. The equivalence of these two models is established up to infinitesimal order by the introduction of an external field correction. This gives a new representation of a coherent state path integral in terms of a more familiar Feynman path integral.
We study spin fluctuations in the spiral phase of the two-dimensional Hubbard model at low doping on the basis of the spin-particle-hole coherent-state path integral. In the strong correlation limit, we obtain an analytical expression of the spin-wave excitations over the entire Brillouin zone except in the vicinity of
q=0. We discuss the validity of the Hartree-Fock and random-phase approximations in the strong-coupling limit, and compare our results with previous numerical and analytical calculations. Although the spiral phase is unstable, as shown by a negative mean-field compressibility and the presence of imaginary spin-fluctuation modes, we expect the short-wavelength fluctuation modes (with real energies) to survive in the actual ground-state of the system.