Electron correlation effects beyond the random phase approximation

Abstract

The methods that have been used to deal with a many-particle system can be basically sorted into three types: Hamiltonian, field theory and phenomenological method. The first two methods are more popular. Traditionally, the Hamiltonian method has been widely adopted in the conventional electronic theory for metals, alloys and semiconductors. Basically, the mean-field approximation (MFA) that has been working well for a weakly coupled system like a metal is employed to simplify a Hamiltonian corresponding to a particular electron system. However, for a strongly coupled many-particle system like a cuprate superconductor MFA should in principle not apply. Therefore, the field theory on the basis of Green’s function and the Feynman diagrams must be invoked. In this method, one is however more familiar with the random phase approximation (RPA) that gives rise to the same results as MFA because of being short of the information for higher-order terms of interaction. For a strongly coupled electron system, it is obvious that one has to deal with higher-order terms of a pair interaction to get a correct solution. Any ignorance of the higher-order terms implies that the more sophisticated information contained in those terms is discarded. However, to date one has not reached a consensus on how to deal with the higher-order terms beyond RPA. We preset here a method that is termed the diagrammatic iteration approach (DIA) and able to derive higher-order terms of the interaction from the information of lower-order ones on the basis of Feynman diagram, with which one is able to go beyond RPA step by step. It is in principle possible that all of higher-order terms can be obtained, and then sorted to groups of diagrams. It turns out that each of the groups can be replaced by an equivalent one, forming a diagrammatic Dyson-equation-like relation. The diagrammatic solution is eventually “translated” to a four-dimensional integral equation. The method can be applied to a layered 2D system that is a model system of cuprate superconductors and others such as atomic, nuclear, heavy-fermion systems, etc.