Abstract
After a historical introduction to the many-body problem the landmark papers on the many-body perturbation theory by Brueckner (1955) and by Goldstone (1957) are reviewed in the light of the present knowledge of many fermion systems. Brueckner started from conventional Rayleigh-Schrodinger perturbation theory, and his derivation of what he called the linked-cluster theorem was pedestrian but very tedious and not sufficiently general. Goldstone used the apparatus of quantum electrodynamics for a very elegant (but to some extent criticizable) derivation of the linked cluster expansion, that showed at first glance little resemblance to that of Brueckner. It is shown that most ingredients of Goldstone’s approach are not necessary for a simple and transparent derivation of the linked cluster expansion. It is only compulsory to work in Fock space. A very simple modern derivation is then given. Finally some insight into the time-dependent theory is gained by means of its regularization.
Published Version
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