Auxiliary Field Functional Integral Representation of the Many-Body Evolution Operator

Abstract

Finding an appropriate functional integral representation of the many-body evolution operator is a crucial task for performing efficient calculations of fermionic systems within the auxiliary field approach. In this paper we derive a new field representation of the imaginary-time evolution operator using the method of Gaussian equivalent representation of Efimov and Ganbold (1991, Physica Status Solidi168, 165). The goal is to obtain a functional integral representation, in which the main divergences caused by the tadpole Feynman diagrams are efficiently eliminated. These diagrams provide the main contributions to the ground state of the system under consideration, and therefore it is important to take them into account adequately, especially at lower temperatures. In addition, we show that the well-known mean field representation of the imaginary-time evolution operator is only the limiting case of the Gaussian equivalent representation in the small time-step regime.