FUNCTIONAL INTEGRAL REPRESENTATIONS AND GOLDEN–THOMPSON INEQUALITIES IN BOSON–FERMION SYSTEMS

Abstract

For a general class of boson–fermion Hamiltonians H acting in the tensor product Hilbert space L2(ℝn) ⊗ ∧(ℂr) of L2(ℝn) and the fermion Fock space ∧(ℂr) over ℂr(n, r ∈ ℕ), we establish, in terms of an n-dimensional conditional oscillator measure, a functional integral representation for the trace Tr (F ⊗ zN f e-tH)(F ∈ L∞(ℝn), z ∈ ℂ∖{0}, t > 0), where N f is the fermion number operator on ∧(ℂr). We prove a Golden–Thompson type inequality for | Tr (F ⊗ zN f e-tH)|. Also we discuss applications to a model in supersymmetric quantum mechanics and present an improved version of the Golden–Thompson inequality in supersymmetric quantum mechanics given by Klimek and Lesniewski ([Lett. Math. Phys.21 (1991) 237–244]). An upper bound for the number of the supersymmetric states is given as well as a sufficient condition for the spontaneous supersymmetry breaking. Moreover, we derive a functional integral representation for the analytical index of a Dirac type operator on ℝn (Witten index) associated with the supersymmetric quantum mechanical model.