The Mean-Field Approximation in Quantum Electrodynamics. The no-photon case

We give here a field-theoretical derivation of the Hamiltonian of the non-relativistic quantum electrodynamics in the Coulomb gauge using the Lagrange formalism. It leads to the same result as the usual derivation, where one just replaces the classical vector potential in the minimal coupling of the second quantized electron Hamiltonian by the quantized one and adds the photon energy. This approach illustrates however the proper use of the Euler-Lagrange equations and the can...

We verify Bogoliubov's approximation for translation invariant Bose gases in the mean field regime, i.e. we prove that the ground state energy $E_N$ is given by $E_N=Ne_\mathrm{H}+\inf \sigma\left(\mathbb{H}\right)+o_{N\rightarrow \infty}(1)$, where $N$ is the number of particles, $e_\mathrm{H}$ is the minimal Hartree energy and $\mathbb{H}$ is the Bogoliubov Hamiltonian. As an intermediate result we show the existence of approximate ground states $\Psi_N$, i.e. states satisf...

According to Dirac's ideas, the vacuum consists of infinitely many virtual electrons which completely fill up the negative part of the spectrum of the free Dirac operator $D^0$. In the presence of an external field, these virtual particles react and the vacuum becomes polarized. In this paper, following Chaix and Iracane ({\it J. Phys. B}, 22, 3791--3814, 1989), we consider the Bogoliubov-Dirac-Fock model, which is derived from no-photon QED. The corresponding BDF-energy ta...

We show under general assumptions that the mean-field approximation for quan- tum many-boson systems is correct. Our contribution unifies and improves on most of the known results. The proof uses general properties of quantization in infinite dimensional spaces, phase-space analysis and measure transportation techniques.

In a previous paper, we have developed a general theory of thermodynamic limits. We apply it here to three different Coulomb quantum systems, for which we prove the convergence of the free energy per unit volume. The first system is the crystal for which the nuclei are classical particles arranged periodically in space and only the electrons are quantum particles. We recover and generalize a previous result of Fefferman. In the second example, both the nuclei and the electr...

In this work, we derive the time-dependent Hartree(-Fock) equations as an effective dynamics for fermionic many-particle systems. Our main results are the first for a quantum mechanical mean-field dynamics for fermions; in previous works, the mean-field limit is usually either coupled to a semiclassical limit, or the interaction is scaled down so much, that the system behaves freely for large particle number $N$. We consider the fermionic Hartree equations (i.e., the Hartree-...

In this paper we consider an interacting Bose gas at zero temperature, in a finite box and in the mean field limiting regime. The N gas particles interact through a pair potential of positive type and with an ultraviolet cut-off. Its (nonzero) Fourier components are sufficiently large with respect to the corresponding kinetic energies of the modes. Using the multi-scale technique in the occupation numbers of particle states introduced in [Pi1], we provide a convergent expansi...

This article examines the consequences of the existence of an upper particle momentum limit in quantum electrodynamics, where this momentum limit is the Planck momentum. The method used is Fourier analysis as developed already by Fermi in his fundamental work on the quantum theory of radiation. After determination of the appropriate Hamiltonian, a Schr\"odinger equation and the associated commutation rules of the field operators are given. At the upper momentum limit mentione...

This article proposes the construction of Wigner measures in the infinite dimensional bosonic quantum field theory, with applications to the derivation of the mean field dynamics. Once these asymptotic objects are well defined, it is shown how they can be used to make connections between different kinds of results or to prove new ones.

While causal perturbation theory and lattice regularisation allow treatment of the ultraviolet divergences in qed, they do not resolve the issues of constructive field theory, or show the validity of qed except as a perturbation theory. I present a rigorous construction of quantum and classical electrodynamics from fundamental principles of quantum theory. Hilbert space of dimension N is justified from statements about measurements with finite range and resolution. Using line...