arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Niels Benedikter.
We consider a dilute quantum gas of interacting spin-1/2 fermions in the thermodynamic limit. For a trial state that resolves the ground state energy to the precision of the Huang--Yang formula, we compute the expectation values of one-body observables on a mesoscopic scale.
We analyse the momentum distribution of a three-dimensional Fermi gas in the mean-field scaling regime in a trial state that was recently proven to reproduce the Gell-Mann-Brueckner correlation energy for Coulomb potentials. For a class of potentials including the Coulomb potential we show that the momentum distribution is given by a step profile corrected by a random phase approximation contribution. Moreover, for potentials with summable Fourier transform we provide optimal error bounds for the deviation from the random phase approximation. This refines a recent analysis by two of the authors to the physically most relevant potentials and to momenta closer to the Fermi surface. The proof relies on a double bootstrap method, improved over the earlier analysis to estimate the momentum distribution both globally over all momenta and pointwise. We argue that a similar result can be expected to hold also for the ground state.
In recent years it has been shown how approximate bosonization can be used to justify the random phase approximation for the correlation energy of interacting fermions in a mean-field scaling limit. At the core is the interpretation of particle-hole excitations close to the Fermi surface at bosons. The main two approaches however differ in emphasizing collective degrees of freedom (particle-hole pairs delocalized over patches on the Fermi surface) or particle-hole pairs exactly localized in momentum space. Both methods lead to equal precision for the correlation energy with regular interaction potentials. This poses the question how big the influence of delocalizing particle-hole pairs really is. In the present note we show that a description with few, completely collective bosonic degrees of freedom only yields an upper bound of about 92% of the optimal value. Nevertheless it is remarkable that such a simple approach comes that close to the optimal bound.
We study the quantum dynamics of a large number of interacting fermionic particles in a constant magnetic field. In a coupled mean-field and semiclassical scaling limit, we show that solutions of the many-body Schrödinger equation converge to solutions of a non-linear Hartree-Fock equation. The central ingredient of the proof are certain semiclassical trace norm estimates of commutators of the position and momentum operators with the one-particle density matrix of the solution of the Hartree-Fock equation. In a first step, we prove their validity for non-interacting initial data in a magnetic field by generalizing a 2020 result of Fournais and Mikkelsen. We then propagate these bounds from the initial data along the Hartree-Fock flow to arbitrary times.
We consider a system of interacting fermions on the three-dimensional torus in a mean-field scaling limit. Our objective is computing the occupation number of the Fourier modes in a trial state obtained through the random phase approximation (in its collective bosonization formulation) for the ground state. We prove that the trial state's momentum distribution has a jump discontinuity, i.e., a well-defined Fermi surface. Moreover the Fermi momentum does not depend on the interaction potential (it is universal). Our result shows that the random phase approximation in the mean-field scaling limit is in principle sufficiently precise to identify a non-trivial Fermi liquid phase.
Recently the leading order of the correlation energy of a Fermi gas in a coupled mean-field and semiclassical scaling regime has been derived, under the assumption of an interaction potential with a small norm and with compact support in Fourier space. We generalize this result to large interaction potentials, requiring only $|\cdot| \hat{V} \in \ell^1 (\mathbb{Z}^3)$. Our proof is based on approximate, collective bosonization in three dimensions. Significant improvements compared to recent work include stronger bounds on non-bosonizable terms and more efficient control on the bosonization of the kinetic energy.
We revisit the derivation of the time-dependent Hartree-Fock equation for interacting fermions in a regime coupling a mean-field and a semiclassical scaling, contributing two comments to the result obtained in 2014 by Benedikter, Porta, and Schlein. First, the derivation holds in arbitrary space dimension. Second, by using an explicit formula for the unitary implementation of particle-hole transformations, we cast the proof in a form similar to the coherent state method of Rodnianski and Schlein for bosons.
I review results concerning the derivation of effective equations for the dynamics of interacting Fermi gases in a high-density regime of mean-field type. Three levels of effective theories, increasing in precision, can be distinguished: the semiclassical theory given by the Vlasov equation, the mean-field theory given by the Hartree-Fock equation, and the description of the dominant effects of non-trivial entanglement by the random phase approximation. Particular attention is given to the discussion of admissible initial data, and I present an example of a realistic quantum quench that can be approximated by Hartree-Fock dynamics.
We consider the quantum many-body evolution of a homogeneous Fermi gas in three dimensions in the coupled semiclassical and mean-field scaling regime. We study a class of initial data describing collective particle-hole pair excitations on the Fermi ball. Using a rigorous version of approximate bosonization, we prove that the many-body evolution can be approximated in Fock space norm by a quasifree bosonic evolution of the collective particle-hole excitations.
We derive rigorously the leading order of the correlation energy of a Fermi gas in a scaling regime of high density and weak interaction. The result verifies the prediction of the random-phase approximation. Our proof refines the method of collective bosonization in three dimensions. We approximately diagonalize an effective Hamiltonian describing approximately bosonic collective excitations around the Hartree-Fock state, while showing that gapless and non-collective excitations have only a negligible effect on the ground state energy.
Hartree-Fock theory has been justified as a mean-field approximation for fermionic systems. However, it suffers from some defects in predicting physical properties, making necessary a theory of quantum correlations. Recently, bosonization of many-body correlations has been rigorously justified as an upper bound on the correlation energy at high density with weak interactions. We review the bosonic approximation, deriving an effective Hamiltonian. We then show that for systems with Coulomb interaction this effective theory predicts collective excitations (plasmons) in accordance with the random phase approximation of Bohm and Pines, and with experimental observation.
While Hartree-Fock theory is well established as a fundamental approximation for interacting fermions, it has been unclear how to describe corrections to it due to many-body correlations. In this paper we start from the Hartree-Fock state given by plane waves and introduce collective particle-hole pair excitations. These pairs can be approximately described by a bosonic quadratic Hamiltonian. We use Bogoliubov theory to construct a trial state yielding a rigorous Gell-Mann-Brueckner-type upper bound to the ground state energy. Our result justifies the random phase approximation in the mean-field scaling regime, for repulsive, regular interaction potentials.
The derivation of effective evolution equations is central to the study of non-stationary quantum many-body sytems, and widely used in contexts such as superconductivity, nuclear physics, Bose-Einstein condensation and quantum chemistry. We reformulate the Dirac-Frenkel approximation principle in terms of reduced density matrices, and apply it to fermionic and bosonic many-body systems. We obtain the Bogoliubov-de-Gennes and Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov equations, respectively. While we do not prove quantitative error estimates, our formulation does show that the approximation is optimal within the class of quasifree states. Furthermore, we prove well-posedness of the Bogoliubov-de-Gennes equations in energy space and discuss conserved quantities.
An integral scheme for the efficient evaluation of two-center integrals over contracted solid harmonic Gaussian functions is presented. Integral expressions are derived for local operators that depend on the position vector of one of the two Gaussian centers. These expressions are then used to derive the formula for three-index overlap integrals where two of the three Gaussians are located at the same center. The efficient evaluation of the latter is essential for local resolution-of-the-identity techniques that employ an overlap metric. We compare the performance of our integral scheme to the widely used Cartesian Gaussian-based method of Obara and Saika (OS). Non-local interaction potentials such as standard Coulomb, modified Coulomb and Gaussian-type operators, that occur in range-separated hybrid functionals, are also included in the performance tests. The speed-up with respect to the OS scheme is up to three orders of magnitude for both, integrals and their derivatives. In particular, our method is increasingly efficient for large angular momenta and highly contracted basis sets.
The Quantum Heisenberg Ferromagnet can be naturally reformulated in terms of interacting bosons (called spin waves or magnons) as an expansion in the inverse spin size. We calculate the first order interaction correction to the free energy, as an upper bound in the limit where the spin size $S \to \infty$ and $βS$ is fixed ($β$ being the inverse temperature). Our result is valid in two and three spatial dimensions. We extrapolate our result to compare with Dyson's low-temperature expansion. While our first-order correction has the expected temperature dependance, in higher orders of the perturbation theory cancellations are necessary.
We consider the evolution of quasi-free states describing $N$ fermions in the mean field limit, as governed by the nonlinear Hartree equation. In the limit of large $N$, we study the convergence towards the classical Vlasov equation. For a class of regular interaction potentials, we establish precise bounds on the rate of convergence.
In this paper we study the dynamics of fermionic mixed states in the mean-field regime. We consider initial states which are close to quasi-free states and prove that, under suitable assumptions on the inital data and on the many-body interaction, the quantum evolution of such initial data is well approximated by a suitable quasi-free state. In particular we prove that the evolution of the reduced one-particle density matrix converges, as the number of particles goes to infinity, to the solution of the time-dependent Hartree-Fock equation. Our result holds for all times, and gives effective estimates on the rate of convergence of the many-body dynamics towards the Hartree-Fock one.
In these notes we review the material presented at the summer school on "Mathematical Physics, Analysis and Stochastics" held at the University of Heidelberg in July 2014. We consider the time-evolution of quantum systems and in particular the rigorous derivation of effective equations approximating the many-body Schrödinger dynamics in certain physically interesting regimes.