Calculating eigenvalues of many-body systems from partition functions

Abstract

A method for calculating the eigenvalue of a many-body system without solving the eigenfunction is suggested. In many cases, we only need the knowledge of eigenvalues rather than eigenfunctions, so we need a method solving only the eigenvalue, leaving alone the eigenfunction. In this paper, the method is established based on statistical mechanics. In statistical mechanics, calculating thermodynamic quantities needs only the knowledge of eigenvalues and then the information of eigenvalues is embodied in thermodynamic quantities. The method suggested in the present paper is indeed a method for extracting the eigenvalue from thermodynamic quantities. As applications, we calculate the eigenvalues for some many-body systems. Especially, the method is used to calculate the quantum exchange energies in quantum many-body systems. Using this method, we also calculate the influence of the topological effect on eigenvalues. Moreover, a complete result of the relation between the counting function and the heat kernel is given in the appendix.