Cumulants represent a natural language for expressing macroscopic properties of a solid. We show that cumulants are subject to a nontrivial geometry. This geometry provides an intuitive understanding of a number of cumulant relations which had been obtained so far by using algebraic considerations. We give general expressions for their infinitesimal and finite transformations and represent a cumulant wave operator through an integration over a path in the Hilbert space. Cases are investigated where this integration can be done exactly. An expression of the ground-state wavefunction in terms of the cumulant wave operator is derived. In the second part of the article we derive the cumulant counterpart of Faddeev`s equations and show its connection to the method of increments.
Cumulants represent a natural language for expressing macroscopic properties of a solid. We show that cumulants are subject to a nontrivial geometry. This geometry provides an intuitive understanding of a number of cumulant relations which had been obtained so far by using algebraic considerations. We give general expressions for their infinitesimal and finite transformations and represent a cumulant wave operator through an integration over a path in the Hilbert space. Cases are investigated where this integration can be done exactly. An expression of the ground-state wavefunction in terms of the cumulant wave operator is derived. In the second part of the article we derive the cumulant counterpart of Faddeev`s equations and show its connection to the method of increments.
Cumulants represent a natural language for expressing macroscopic properties of many-body systems. The most important property of cumulants is that of size consistency, i.e. a cumulant expression for an extensive variable scales with the size of the system, independent of possible further approximations used in the evaluation procedure. Cumulants can be considered as a generalization of linked diagrams known from diagrammatic technique of many-body theory. In this paper we outline a recently introduced method based on cumulants in order to derive expressions for zero-temperature properties of many-particle systems, i.e. the ground-state energy, static expectation values and dynamical correlation functions. This cumulant formalism allows one to describe weakly and strongly correlated systems along the same lines. We show that the coupled-cluster method known from quantum chemistry can be derived from our cumulant approach. Finally, we demonstrate the usefulness of the cumulant method by applying it to examples from solid-state physics and quantum chemistry.
Starting from the characteristic function of an operator, we investigate cumulant expansions in quantum optics and apply them to two-dimensional distributions for the canonical variables of the phase space in the case of one degree of freedom (Wigner quasiprobability and its Fourier transform, uncertainty matrix) and to one-dimensional distributions (phase operator, time evolution operator to Hamiltonian). In the relations between cumulants and moments, we make emphasis on the central moments of an operator. It is shown that the determinant of the uncertainty matrix (modified uncertainty product) is invariant with respect to rotation and squeezing of the state in the phase space, whereas the uncertainty sum is only invariant with respect to rotations. We examine some problems for exponentials of the phase operator and show how mean values and variances are connected with the cumulants. The Hilbert–Schmidt distance of a state during time evolution to an initial state is discussed by cumulants.
In this second in a series of four articles we create a mathematical formalism sufficient to represent nontrivial hamiltonian quantum dynamics, including resonances. Some parts of this construction are also mathematically necessary. The specific construction is the transforming of a pair of quantized free oscillators into a resonant system of coupled oscillators by analytic continuation which is performed algebraically by the group of complex symplectic transformations, thereby creating dynamical representations of numerous semi-groups. The quantum free oscillators are the quantum analogue of classical action angle variable solutions for the coupled oscillators and quantum resonances, including Breit-Wigner resonances. Among the exponentially decaying Breit-Wigner resonances represented by Gamow vectors are hamiltonian systems in which energy transfers from one oscillator to the other. There are significant mathematical constraints in order that complex spectra be accommodated in a well defined formalism which represents dynamics, and these may be met by using the commutative real algebra $\C (1,i)$ as the ring of scalars in place of the field of complex numbers. These mathematical constraints compel use of fundamental (spinor) representations rather than UIR's. By including distributional solutions to the Schr{ö}dinger equation, placing us in a rigged Hilbert space, and by using the Hamiltonian as a generator of canonical transformation of the space of states, the Schr{ö}dinger equation is the equation for parallel transport of generalized energy eigenvectors, explicitly establishing the Hamiltonian as the generator of dynamical time translations in this formalism.
It is usually taken for granted that the natural mathematical framework for quantum mechanics is the theory of Hilbert spaces, where pure states of a quantum system correspond to complex vectors of unit length. These vectors can be combined to create more general states expressed in terms of positive semidefinite matrices of unit trace called density operators. A density operator tells us everything we know about a quantum system. In particular, it specifies a unique probability for any measurement outcome. Thus, to fully appreciate quantum mechanics as a statistical model for physical phenomena, it is necessary to understand the basic properties of its set of states. Studying the convex geometry of quantum states provides important clues as to why the theory is expressed most naturally in terms of complex amplitudes. At the very least, it gives us a new perspective into thinking about structure of quantum mechanics. \n \n \nThis thesis is concerned with the structure of quantum state space obtained from the geometry of the convex set of probability distributions for a special class of measurements called symmetric informationally complete (SIC) measurements. In this context, quantum mechanics is seen as a particular restriction of a regular simplex, where the state space is postulated to carry a symmetric set of states called SICs, which are associated with equiangular lines in a complex vector space. The analysis applies specifically to 3-dimensional quantum systems or qutrits, which is the simplest nontrivial case to consider according to Gleason's theorem. It includes a full characterization of qutrit SICs and includes specific proposals for implementing them using linear optics. The infinitely many qutrit SICs are classified into inequivalent families according to the Clifford group, where equivalence is defined by geometrically invariant numbers called triple products. The multiplication of SIC projectors is also used to define structure coefficients, which are convenient for elucidating some additional structure possessed by SICs, such as the Lie algebra associated with the operator basis defined by SICs, and a linear dependency structure inherited from the Weyl-Heisenberg symmetry. After describing the general one-to-one correspondence between density operators and SIC probabilities, many interesting features of the set of qutrits are described, including an elegant formula for its pure states, which reveals a permutation symmetry related to the structure of a finite affine plane, the exact rotational equivalence of different SIC probability spaces, the shape of qutrit state space defined by the radial distance of the boundary from the maximally mixed state, and a comparison of the 2-dimensional cross-sections of SIC probabilities to known results. Towards the end, the representation of quantum states in terms of SICs is used to develop a method for reconstructing quantum theory from the postulate of maximal consistency, and a procedure for building up qutrit state space from a finite set of points corresponding to a Hesse configuration in Hilbert space is sketched briefly.
We show how series expansions of functions of bosonic number operators are naturally derived from finite-difference calculus. The scheme employs Newton series rather than Taylor series known from differential calculus, and also works in cases where the Taylor expansion fails. For a function of number operators, such an expansion is automatically normal ordered. Applied to the Holstein-Primakoff representation of spins, the scheme yields an exact series expansion with a finite number of terms and, in addition, allows for a systematic expansion of the spin operators that respects the spin commutation relations within a truncated part of the full Hilbert space. Furthermore, the Newton series expansion strongly facilitates the calculation of expectation values with respect to coherent states. As a third example, we show that factorial moments and factorial cumulants arising in the context of photon or electron counting are a natural consequence of Newton series expansions. Finally, we elucidate the connection between normal ordering, Taylor and Newton series by determining a corresponding integral transformation, which is related to the Mellin transform.