I discuss many-body models for correlated fermions in two space dimensions which can be solved exactly using group theory. The simplest example is a model of a quantum Hall system: two-dimensional (2D) fermions in a constant magnetic field and a particular non-local four-point interaction. It is exactly solvable due to a dynamical symmetry corresponding to the Lie algebra gl ∞ ⊕ gl ∞ . There is an algorithm to construct all energy eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of this model. The latter are, in general, many-body states with spatial correlations. The model also has a non-trivial zero temperature phase diagram. I point out that this QH model can be obtained from a more realistic one using a truncation procedure generalizing a similar one leading to mean field theory. Applying this truncation procedure to other 2D fermion models I obtain various simplified models of increasing complexity which generalize mean field theory by taking into account non-trivial correlations but nevertheless are treatable by exact methods.
I discuss many-body models for correlated fermions in two space dimensions which can be solved exactly using group theory. The simplest example is a model of a quantum Hall system: two-dimensional (2D) fermions in a constant magnetic field and a particular non-local four-point interaction. It is exactly solvable due to a dynamical symmetry corresponding to the Lie algebra gl ∞ ⊕ gl ∞ . There is an algorithm to construct all energy eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of this model. The latter are, in general, many-body states with spatial correlations. The model also has a non-trivial zero temperature phase diagram. I point out that this QH model can be obtained from a more realistic one using a truncation procedure generalizing a similar one leading to mean field theory. Applying this truncation procedure to other 2D fermion models I obtain various simplified models of increasing complexity which generalize mean field theory by taking into account non-trivial correlations but nevertheless are treatable by exact methods.
This Ph.D. thesis in mathematical physics concerns systems of interacting fermions with strong correlations. For these systems the physical properties can only be described in terms of the collective behavior of the fermions. Moreover, they are often characterized by a close competition between fermion localization versus delocalization, which can result in complex and exotic physical phenomena. Strongly correlated fermion systems are usually modelled by many-body Hamiltonians for which the kinetic- and interaction energy have the same order of magnitude. This makes them challenging to study as the application of conventional computational methods, like mean field- or perturbation theory, often gives unreliable results. Of particular interest are Hubbard-type models, which provide minimal descriptions of strongly correlated fermions. The research of this thesis focuses on such models defined on two-dimensional square lattices. One motivation for this is the so-called high-Tc problem of the cuprate superconductors. A main hypothesis is that there exists an underlying Fermi surface with nearly flat parts, i.e. regions where the surface is straight. It is shown that a particular continuum limit of the lattice system leads to an effective model amenable to computations. This limit is partial in that it only involves fermion degrees of freedom near the flat parts. The result is an effective quantum field theory that is analyzed using constructive bosonization methods. Various exactly solvable models of interacting fermions in two spatial dimensions are also derived and studied.
Interactions in many-body systems bring about collective phenomena such as superconductivity and magnetism. In many cases, simple mean-field theory provides a basic understanding of these phenomena. In fermion systems in one dimension, however, neither the mean-field theory nor perturbation theory works if it starts from the non-interacting fermions. This is because the interaction effects in one dimension are much stronger than those in higher dimensions. Intuitively speaking, two particles cannot avoid collision in a single-way track in contrast with two and three dimensions. Thus the interaction effects appear in a drastic way in one dimension. Another aspect in one dimension, which overcompensates the difficulty of perturbation and mean-field theories, is that a complete account of interaction effects is possible under certain conditions. The class of systems satisfying such conditions is referred to as exactly solvable. Soon after the establishment of quantum mechanics, Bethe solved exactly the Heisenberg spin model in one dimension [28]. The basic idea of the solution is now called the Bethe ansatz. Since then, theoretical physics in one dimension has developed into a magnificent edifice, including sophisticated mathematical techniques. In many cases, the eigenfunctions derived by the Bethe ansatz consist of plane waves that are defined stepwise for each spatial configuration of particles. Since the coefficients of plane waves depend on the configuration, the property of the wave function cannot be made explicit without detailed knowledge of these coefficients. We mention some of the recent monographs on the Bethe ansatz and its extensions [54, 118, 179]. A comprehensive account on exactly solvable models has recently been given by Sutherland [178].
We introduce and study an exactly solvable model of several species of fermions in which particles interact pairwise through a mutual magnetic field; the interaction only operates between particles belonging to different species. After an unitary transformation, the model reduces to one in which each particle sees a magnetic field which depends on the total numbers of particles of all the other species; this may be viewed as the mean-field model for a class of anyonic theories. Our model is invariant under charge conjugation C and the product PT (parity and time reversal). For the special case of two species, we examine various properties of this system, such as the Hall conductivity, the wavefunction overlap arising from the transfer of one particle from one species to another and the one-particle off-diagonal density matrix. Our model is a generalization of a recently introduced solvable model in one dimension.
We investigate a model containing two species of one-dimensional fermions interacting via a gauge field determined by the positions of all particles of the opposite species. The model can be solved exactly via a simple unitary transformation. Nevertheless, correlation functions exhibit nontrivial interaction-dependent exponents. A similar model defined on a lattice is introduced and solved. Various generalizations, e.g., to the case of internal symmetries of the fermions, are discussed. The present treatment also clarifies certain aspects of Luttinger's original solution of the ``Luttinger model.''
Accurately describing many-body effects in multi-orbital systems remains a major challenge in theoretical condensed matter physics. At present, there is a significant methodological gap between the numerical tools used in ab initio computational materials science and those developed to study strong electronic correlations. The former can treat realistic, large-scale systems but typically neglect many-body effects, while the latter focus on simplified models with only a few degrees of freedom, as only such models can be solved accurately in the presence of strong interactions. The purpose of this thesis is to bridge these two approaches and establish a systematic theoretical framework for realistic correlated electronic materials. This involves a full-cycle methodology that begins with constructing ab initio interacting models from density-functional theory, solving them using dynamical mean-field theory to capture local correlations, and extending beyond to incorporate non-local collective electronic fluctuations. To this end, we introduce the "dual" approach to strong correlations, which includes the dual fermion, dual boson, and dual triply irreducible local expansion methods. The central idea of the dual theories is to shift the reference point of the conventional Feynman diagrammatic expansion from a non-interacting electronic system to an interacting but exactly solvable one. Integrating out this reference system recasts the expansion in an effective dual space, where all diagrammatic building blocks are renormalized by the corresponding impurity quantities. This procedure transforms a non-perturbative expansion in the original variables into a perturbative expansion in terms of dual fermionic and bosonic fields, exact in both the weak- and strong-coupling limits. In this thesis, we collect and systematize the major developments of dual techniques achieved to date.
We discuss interacting fermion models in two dimensions, and, in particular, such that can be solved exactly by bosonization. One solvable model of this kind was proposed by Mattis as an effective description of fermions on a square lattice. We review recent work on a specific relation between a variant of Mattis' model and such a lattice fermion system, as well as the exact solution of this model. The background for this work includes well-established results for one-dimensional systems and the high-Tc problem. We also mention exactly solvable extensions of Mattis' model.