Renormalization group studies of tunneling systems in the condensed phase

Abstract

In the path integral representation of the thermal density matrix, the sum over quantum paths is equivalent to the configurational partition function sum for a system composed of long polyatomic molecules. We give an iterative (renormalization group) approach which successively reduces the number of degrees of freedom in this isomorphic classical many-body problem to a more tractable few-body problem. We give as examples a two state tunneling system coupled to an adiabatic and nonadiabatic bath and an impurity with spin coupled to conduction band electrons.