Diagrammatical methods within the path integral representation for quantum systems

Abstract

The path integral representation has been successfully applied to the study of equilibrium properties of quantum systems for a long time. In particular, such a representation allowed Ginibre to prove the convergence of the low-fugacity expansions for systems with short-range interactions. First, I will show that the crucial trick underlying Ginibre's proof is the introduction of an equivalent classical system made with loops. Within the Feynman-Kac formula for the density matrix, such loops naturally emerge by collecting together the paths followed by particles exchanged in a given cyclic permutation. Two loops interact via an average of two- body genuine interactions between particles belonging to different loops, while the interactions between particles inside a given loop are accounted for in a loop fugacity. It turns out that the grand-partition function of the genuine quantum system exactly reduces to its classical counterpart for the gas of loops. The corresponding so-called magic formula can be combined with standard Mayer diagrammatics for the classical gas of loops. This provides low-density representations for the quantum correlations or thermodynamical functions, which are quite useful when collective effects must be taken into account properly. Indeed, resummations and or reorganizations of Mayer graphs can be performed by exploiting their remarkable topological and combinatorial properties, while statistical weights and bonds are purely c-numbers. The interest of that method will be illustrated through a brief description of its application to two long-standing problems, namely recombination in Coulomb systems and condensation in the interacting Bose gas.