Fermionic Gaussians

Abstract

The notion of a Gaussian as the exponential of a quadratic is rather familiar. Such functions are of considerable importance in a number of contexts, for example within quantum theory. Thus, in the Schrödinger representation of the canonical commutation relations they alone minimize uncertainty and they appear as ground states for harmonic oscillators. Also in the complex-wave representation of a free boson field they arise as transforms of the Fock vacuum under certain Bogoliubov automorphisms.