Equations of motion for a spectrum-generating algebra: Lipkin–Meshkov–Glick model

Abstract

For a spectrum-generating Lie algebra, a generalized equations-of-motion scheme determines numerical values of excitation energies and algebra matrix elements. In the approach to the infinite particle number limit or, more generally, whenever the dimension of the quantum state space is very large, the equations-of-motion method may achieve results that are impractical to obtain by diagonalization of the Hamiltonian matrix. To test the method's effectiveness, we apply it to the well-known Lipkin–Meshkov–Glick (LMG) model to find its low-energy spectrum and associated generator matrix elements in the eigenenergy basis. When the dimension of the LMG representation space is 106, computation time on a notebook computer is a few minutes. For a large particle number in the LMG model, the low-energy spectrum makes a quantum phase transition from a nondegenerate harmonic vibrator to a twofold degenerate harmonic oscillator. The equations-of-motion method computes critical exponents at the transition point.