Many-body formalism for thermally excited wave packets: A way to connect the quantum regime to the classical regime
Name
PhysRevA.95.062124.pdf
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226.84 KB
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Adobe PDF
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Author(s)
Combescot, Monique
Chenu, Aurelia
Date Issued
June 2017
Journal
Physical Review A
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
Chenu, Aurélia and Combescot Monique. "Many-body formalism for thermally excited wave packets: A way to connect the quantum regime to the classical regime." Physical Review A 95, 062124 (2017).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Free classical particles have well-defined momentum and position, while free quantum particles have well-defined momentum but a position fully delocalized over the sample volume. We develop a many-body formalism based on wave-packet operators that connects these two limits, the thermal energy being distributed between the state spatial extension and its thermal excitation. The corresponding mixed quantum-classical states, which render the Boltzmann operator diagonal, are the physically relevant states when the temperature is finite. The formulation of many-body Hamiltonians in terms of these thermally excited wave packets and the resulting effective scatterings is provided.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Chemistry
Terms of Use
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.95.062124
