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

We consider a non-relativistic electron bound by an external potential and coupled to the quantized electromagnetic field in the standard model of non-relativistic QED. We compute the energy functional of product states of the form $u\otimes \Psi_f$, where $u$ is a normalized state for the electron and $\Psi_f$ is a coherent state in Fock space for the photon field. The minimization of this functional yields a Maxwell--Schr{\"o}dinger system up to a trivial renormalization. W...

These lectures notes are aimed at introducing the reader to some recent mathematical tools and results for the mean-field limit in statistical dynamics. As a warm-up, lecture 1 reviews the approach to the mean-field limit in classical mechanics following the ideas of W. Braun, K. Hepp and R.L. Dobrushin, based on the notions of phase space empirical measures, Klimontovich solutions and Monge-Kantorovich-Wasserstein distances between probability measures. Lecture 2 discusses a...

In this paper we consider an interacting Bose gas at zero temperature, constrained to 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. The (nonzero) Fourier components of the potential are assumed to be sufficiently large with respect to the corresponding kinetic energies of the modes like in the companion papers [Pi1]-[Pi2]. Using the multi-scale technique in the occupa...

These lecture notes treat the mean-field approximation for equilibrium states of N body systems in classical and quantum statistical mechanics. A general strategy to justify effective models based on assumptions of statistical independence of the particles is in presented in detail. The main tools are a structure theorems of de Finetti that describe large N limits of states accessible to the systems in question, exploiting the indistinguishablity of particles. The focus is on...

We discuss an example of a subvacuum effect, where a quantum expectation value is below the vacuum level, and is hence negative. The example is the time average of the mean squared electric field in a non-classical state where one mode is excited. We give some specific examples of such states, and discuss the lower bound on the squared field or its time average. We show when a lower bound can be obtained by diagonalization of the squared electric field operator, and calculate...

First-principles studies of strongly-interacting hadronic systems using lattice quantum chromodynamics (QCD) have been complemented in recent years with the inclusion of quantum electrodynamics (QED). The aim is to confront experimental results with more precise theoretical determinations, e.g. for the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon and the CP-violating parameters in the decay of mesons. Quantifying the effects arising from enclosing QED in a finite volume remains a pr...

We consider the dynamics of a heavy quantum tracer particle coupled to a non-relativistic boson field in ${\mathbb R}^3$. The pair interactions of the bosons are of mean-field type, with coupling strength proportional to $\frac1N$ where $N$ is the expected particle number. Assuming that the mass of the tracer particle is proportional to $N$, we derive generalized Hartree equations in the limit $N\rightarrow\infty$. Moreover, we prove the global well-posedness of the associate...

We consider the dynamics of a large system of N interacting bosons in the mean-field regime where the interaction is of order 1/N. We prove that the fluctuations around the nonlinear Hartree state are generated by an effective quadratic Hamiltonian in Fock space, which is derived from Bogoliubov's approximation. We use a direct method in the N-particle space, which is different from the one based on coherent states in Fock space.

We introduce a new method for deriving the time-dependent Hartree or Hartree-Fock equations as an effective mean-field dynamics from the microscopic Schroedinger equation for fermionic many-particle systems in quantum mechanics. The method is an adaption of the method used in [Pickl, Lett. Math. Phys., 97(2):151-164, 2011] for bosonic systems to fermionic systems. It is based on a Gronwall type estimate for a suitable measure of distance between the microscopic solution and a...

We review recent results about the derivation and the analysis of two Hartree-Fock-type models for the polarization of vacuum. We pay particular attention to the variational construction of a self-consistent polarized vacuum, and to the physical agreement between our non-perturbative construction and the perturbative description provided by Quantum Electrodynamics.