EPJB Colloquium - Fulfillment of sum-rules and Goldstone modes in many body theories

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Published on 15 February 2016

This EPJ B Colloquium article explores applications of the Self-Consistent Random Phase Approximation (SCRPA) approach to Fermi systems with a continuously broken symmetry. Correlations beyond those considered by standard Random Phase Approximation (RPA) are summed up, thereby correcting for the quasi-boson approximation in standard RPA.

Desirable properties of standard RPA, such as fulfilment of the energy-weighted sum rule and the appearance of Goldstone (zero) modes, are preserved. The authors show theoretically as well as numerically, for a model case, that SCRPA maintains all the properties of standard RPA for practically all instances of spontaneously-broken symmetries. A simpler approximate form of SCRPA, the so-called renormalised RPA, also exhibits these properties. The SCRPA equations are first outlined as an eigenvalue problem, and then it is shown how an equivalent many-body Green’s function approach can be formulated.