General many-body systems

The problem of how to visualize and sometimes solve a general many-body system is considered. The ideas are established in the context of very simple small systems, a Hubbard model and a coupled electron-phonon model, both on two lattice sites. These models are also solved to good approximation in the thermodynamic limit, although the Hubbard model is restricted to a small number of holes away from the Mott insulating state. Response functions are also considered. A fairly general many-body Hamiltonian is considered. It consists of an electron or other fermion kinetic energy and electron-electron interactions, which may be coupled to a bose field such as a phonon. The phonons themselves may be nonlinear (have self-interactions). The system may be strongly coupled. One may also add coupling to an external driving field, such as an ac electric field. The methods discussed are nonperturbative, and so differ from the standard methods of diagrammatic perturbation theory. A comparison is made with diagrammatic methods in the context of the random phase approximation. 6 refs., 12 figs