Many-body formalism for thermally excited wave packets: A way to connect the quantum regime to the classical regime
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.
- Publication:
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Physical Review A
- Pub Date:
- June 2017
- DOI:
- 10.1103/PhysRevA.95.062124
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1703.03828
- Bibcode:
- 2017PhRvA..95f2124C
- Keywords:
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- Quantum Physics
- E-Print:
- 7 pages, 2 figures, 2 pages supplementary material. (v2) link to the coherent states added. Final published version. (v3) 1 Ref. added