A practical method is developed to deal with the second quantization of the many-body system containing the composite particles.In our treatment,the modes associated with composite particles are regarded approximately as independent ones compared with those of unbound particles.The field operators of the composite particles thus arise naturally in the second quantization Hamiltonian.To be emphasized,the second quantization Hamiltonian has the regular structures which correspond clearly to different physical processes.
A practical method is developed to deal with the second quantization of the many-body system containing the composite particles.In our treatment,the modes associated with composite particles are regarded approximately as independent ones compared with those of unbound particles.The field operators of the composite particles thus arise naturally in the second quantization Hamiltonian.To be emphasized,the second quantization Hamiltonian has the regular structures which correspond clearly to different physical processes.
The many-body problem for a system of composite particles is formulated in a way which takes explicit account of the composite nature of these particles and allows a clear separation between interatomic and intraatomic interactions. A second-quantization representation, fully equivalent to the conventional representation in which nuclei and electrons appear explicitly, is developed in terms of atomic annihilation and creation operators satisfying elementary Bose or Fermi commutation relations. All effects of the composite nature of the atoms are exactly contained in the interatomic and intraatomic matrix elements and in certain exchange integrals. An application is made to the problem of Bose condensation of fermion pairs.
A method of constructing ’’atomic second quantization’’ representations is described, based on the introduction of redundant modes (’’ideal atom variables’’) which are then given physical content by carrying out a suitable unitary transformation, the ’’generalized Tani transformation.’’ In such a representation bound atoms or molecules are described by elementary Bose or Fermi operators, the field operators for nuclei and electrons referring only to unbound particles. The Hamiltonian thus obtained contains not only nucleus–nucleus, electron–electron, and nucleus–electron Coulomb interactions, but also atom–atom, atom–nucleus, and atom–electron Coulomb and exchange interactions, including breakup and recombination terms. All possible scattering and reaction channels are exhibited simultaneously in this transformed Hamiltonian. The method is applicable to any species or mixture of species of composite particles, but for simplicity the derivation is restricted here to the case of atomic hydrogen.
In this chapter we describe a technique to deal with identical particles that is called second quantization . Despite being a technique, second quantization helps a lot in understanding physics. One can learn and endlessly repeat newspaper-style statements particles are fields , fields are particles without grasping their meaning. Second quantization brings these concepts to an operational level. Since the procedure of second quantization is slightly different for fermions and bosons, we have to treat the two cases separately. We start with considering a system of identical bosons, and introduce creation and annihilation operators (CAPs) that change the number of particles in a given many-particle state, thereby connecting different states in Fock space. We show how to express occupation numbers in terms of CAPs, and then get to the heart of the second quantization: the commutation relations for the bosonic CAPs. As a next step, we construct field operators out of the CAPs and spend quite some time (and energy) presenting the physics of the particles in terms of these field operators. Only afterward, do we explain why all this activity has been called second quantization. In Section 3.4 we then present the same procedure for fermions, and we mainly focus on what is different as compared to bosons. The formalism of second quantization is summarized in Table 3.1.
Nothing can be made out of nothing. William Shakespeare , King Lear Historically, quantization of the motion of particles was developed first. The state was described by a wave function and observables by operators. When dealing with interactions between particles and fields, such as the electromagnetic field, the fields were treated classically. Classical field equations look like the quantum mechanical equations for the wave function of the field quanta. For example, the Klein–Gordon classical field equation is similar to the quantum mechanical wave equation for a relativistic spinless particle. Quantizing the fields, leading to quantum field theory, appears to be quantizing a theory that has already been quantized; hence the name “second quantization.” In reality, there is only one quantization and one quantum theory. The method of second quantization is important in the study of many-particle systems. It enables us to express many-body operators in terms of creation and annihilation operators, thus rendering calculations less cumbersome. Moreover, the method makes it possible to treat systems with a variable number of particles; that is why the method initially emerged in the context of quantum field theory. In Chapter 1 we indicated that any one-particle wave function may be expanded in a complete set of states. In this chapter, we show that products of single-particle states, when properly symmetrized, form an orthonormal basis for the expansion of the wave function of an N -particle system.
This chapter introduces and applies the method of second quantization, a technique that underpins the formulation of quantum many-particle theories. Second quantization formalism treats systems of bosons or fermions with a fixed or variable number of particles in a unified way. The chapter reviews the key aspects of this formalism. The formalism of second quantization treats systems of bosons with a fixed or variable number of particles in a unified manner. In many physical processes, the particle number does change. Different quantum operators are expressed most naturally in different representations, which make basis changes an essential issue in quantum physics. Quantum field theory is a universal tool that has applications ranging from atomic, molecular, and particle physics to condensed matter and statistical physics as well as modern quantum chemistry. The fundamental difference between classical and quantum mechanics relates to the concept of indistinguishability of identical particles.
Up to a point, the quantum theory developed in chapter 5 was quite general. However, the systems we had in mind were non-relativistic ones consisting of a fixed number of particles. In this chapter, we extend the theory to deal with systems in which the number of particles can change. There are several reasons for wanting to do this. The most obvious is that we need a method of describing high-energy scattering and decay processes in which particles can be created and destroyed. A second is that, when we try to make quantum theory consistent with special relativity, we encounter difficulties (discussed in chapter 7) that can be resolved only in this more general setting. The final reason is that, even for systems of non-relativistic particles, the mathematics rapidly becomes intractable as the number of particles increases. A useful device for dealing with large systems is, roughly speaking, to imagine adding an extra particle, which serves as a theoretical probe of the state of the system. To put the matter another way, the method of second quantization developed in this chapter provides a means of dealing with the entire system by considering only a few particles at a time.