Quantum many-body Green-functions: theory, interrelations and applications
Sebastian Kalhöfer
Abstract Green-function techniques are among the most versatile tools for investigating quantum many-body systems at finite temperature. Yet, standard textbook treatments often fragment the formalism—separating bosons and fermions, systems with massless and massive particles, or restricting proofs to special Hamiltonians—thereby obscuring the structural unity of the theory. This work develops a general, Hamiltonian-independent framework for both real- and imaginary-time Green-functions, valid for any combination of bosonic and fermionic degrees of freedom, including mixed systems such as interacting electron–phonon models. The key conceptual advance is the nature index η , which complements the conventional statistical sign ζ . While ζ encodes particle statistics, η distinguishes canonical quantization of systems with massless particles ( η = 0) from second quantization of systems with massive particles ( η = 1). This classification removes ambiguities in chemical-potential terms and unifies the treatment of photons, phonons, electrons, and their mixtures under a single notation. From this basis, we formulate generalized ensemble constructions, generalized Lehmann-representations, and a fluctuation-dissipation theorem valid for arbitrary Hamiltonians. Several results—such as the monotonicity of particle number in the chemical potential, an explicit formula for the quadratic contribution to the internal energy from the retarded Green-function, and the Hartree-contribution to the self-energy in electron–phonon systems—are either absent from, or only sparsely mentioned in, existing literature. We further introduce Green’s Chart, a visual and algebraic map that systematically connects all Green-function types through analytic continuation, Fourier-transforms, and Wick-rotations, enabling all to be generated from the Matsubara Green-function. Applications to both non-interacting and interacting models demonstrate the framework’s ability to compute densities of states, thermodynamic potentials, and spectral functions with a consistent formalism. The results provide a complete and reproducible toolkit for equilibrium many-body theory, consolidating scattered results into a unified structure suitable for both pedagogical and computational purposes.
European Journal of Physics•Dec 2, 2025•0 citations