Fermion functions

In 1929 (Phys. Rev., 34, 1203) John Slater published his famous (non-group-theoretical) determinantal method for constructing antisymmetric fermion functions. In 1927 (Proc. Roy. Soc., 114A 243) Paul Dirac introduced the... 

From all this one must conclude that the determinantal and second-quantized formulations should be regarded as a poor man s group theory which, while convenient, hides the basic freeon dynamics. These fermion methods have the additional disadvantage that their antisymmetric fermion functions are not normally pure spin (freeon) states so that spin-projection may be required. A method for avoiding (approximately) spin projection is the employment of the variation principle to approximate the ground state e. g., unrestricted Hartree-Fock theory. Finally the use of the fermion formulations has lead to the spin paradigm as a replacement for the more fundamental freeon dynamics. 

In the previous discussion of the symmetry of the Dirac equation (chapter 6), it was shown that the Dirac equation was symmetric under time reversal, and that the fermion functions occur in Kramers pairs where the two members are related by time reversal. We will have to deal with a variety of operators, and in most cases the methodologies will be developed in the absence of an external magnetic field, or with the magnetic field considered as a perturbation. Consequently, we can make the developments in terms of a basis of Kramers pairs, which are the natural representation of the wave function in a system that is symmetric under time reversal. The development here is primarily the development of a second-quantized formalism. We will use the term Kramers-restricted to cover techniques and methods based on spinors that in some well-defined way appear as Kramers pairs. The analogous nonrelativistic situation is the spin-restricted formalism, which requires that orbitals appear as pairs with the same spatial part but with a and spins respectively. Spin restriction thus appears as a special case of Kramers restriction, because of the time-reversal connection between a and spin functions. 

The fermion functions span the two-dimensional E /2 irrep, and we have case 3. 

The fermion functions are either in the two-dimensional 1/2 irrep, or they are in the two one-dimensional irreps 3/2 and -3/2 case 3 in this group. 

We now return to the question of how time-reversal symmetry relates to doublegroup symmetry and the block structure of operator matrices. For case 2 above, with the two components of the Kramers pair belonging to different irreps, there are no matrix elements of totally symmetric operators between a fermion function and... 

One obvious problem with this bispinor form is that it does not carry time-reversal symmetry. The product of two fermion functions should transform as a boson and thus be symmetric with respect to time reversal. The simple products of spin functions clearly do not do this (aa) = fifi, not aa. This problem can be remedied by making linear combinations of the primitive spin functions. Thus we can change basis to... 

A symmetry that holds for any system is the permutational symmetry of the polyelectronic wave function. Electrons are fermions and indistinguishable, and therefore the exchange of any two pairs must invert the phase of the wave function. This symmetry holds, of course, not only to pericyclic reactions. 

As pointed out in the previous paragraph, the total wave function of a molecule consists of an electronic and a nuclear parts. The electrons have a different intrinsic nature from nuclei, and hence can be treated separately when one considers the issue of permutational symmetry. First, let us consider the case of electrons. These are fermions with spin and hence the subsystem of electrons obeys the Fermi-Dirac statistics the total electronic wave function... 

Since the total wave function must have the correct symmetry under the permutation of identical nuclei, we can determine the symmetiy of the rovi-bronic wave function from consideration of the corresponding symmetry of the nuclear spin function. We begin by looking at the case of a fermionic system for which the total wave function must be antisynmiebic under permutation of any two identical particles. If the nuclear spin function is symmetric then the rovibronic wave function must be antisymmetric conversely, if the nuclear spin function is antisymmebic, the rovibronic wave function must be symmetric under permutation of any two fermions. Similar considerations apply to bosonic systems The rovibronic wave function must be symmetric when the nuclear spin function is symmetric, and the rovibronic wave function must be antisymmetiic when the nuclear spin function is antisymmetric. This warrants... 

In this formulation, the electron density is expressed as a linear combination of basis functions similar in mathematical form to HF orbitals. A determinant is then formed from these functions, called Kohn-Sham orbitals. It is the electron density from this determinant of orbitals that is used to compute the energy. This procedure is necessary because Fermion systems can only have electron densities that arise from an antisymmetric wave function. There has been some debate over the interpretation of Kohn-Sham orbitals. It is certain that they are not mathematically equivalent to either HF orbitals or natural orbitals from correlated calculations. However, Kohn-Sham orbitals do describe the behavior of electrons in a molecule, just as the other orbitals mentioned do. DFT orbital eigenvalues do not match the energies obtained from photoelectron spectroscopy experiments as well as HF orbital energies do. The questions still being debated are how to assign similarities and how to physically interpret the differences. 

The most general statement of the Pauli principle for electrons and other fermions is that the total wave function must be antisymmetric to electron (or fermion) exchange. For bosons it must be symmetric to exchange. 

Systems containing symmetric wave function components ate called Bose-Einstein systems (129) those having antisymmetric wave functions are called Fermi-Ditac systems (130,131). Systems in which all components are at a single quantum state are called MaxweU-Boltzmaim systems (122). Further, a boson is a particle obeying Bose-Einstein statistics, a fermion is one obeying Eermi-Ditac statistics (132). 

An additional complication in the PIMC simulations arises when Bose or Fermi statistics is included in the formalism. The trace in the partition function allows for paths which may end at a particle index which is different from the starting index. In this way larger, closed paths may build up which eventually spread over the entire system. All such possible paths corresponding to the exchange of indistinguishable particles have to be taken into account in the partition function. For bosons these contributions are summed up for fermions the number of permutations of particle indices involved decides whether the contribution is added (even) or subtracted (odd) in the partition function. 

Normal product of free-field creation and annihilation operators, 606 Normal product operator, 545 operating on Fermion operators, 545 N-particle probability distribution function, 42... 

The behavior of a multi-particle system with a symmetric wave function differs markedly from the behavior of a system with an antisymmetric wave function. Particles with integral spin and therefore symmetric wave functions satisfy Bose-Einstein statistics and are called bosons, while particles with antisymmetric wave functions satisfy Fermi-Dirac statistics and are called fermions. Systems of " He atoms (helium-4) and of He atoms (helium-3) provide an excellent illustration. The " He atom is a boson with spin 0 because the spins of the two protons and the two neutrons in the nucleus and of the two electrons are paired. The He atom is a fermion with spin because the single neutron in the nucleus is unpaired. Because these two atoms obey different statistics, the thermodynamic and other macroscopic properties of liquid helium-4 and liquid helium-3 are dramatically different. 

The A-particle eigenfunctions I v(l, 2,. .., A) in equation (8.47) are not properly symmetrized. For bosons, the wave function (1, 2,. .., N) must be symmetric with respect to particle interchange and for fermions it must be antisymmetric. Properly symmetrized wave functions may be readily con-... 

We may express the single-particle wave function tpniqd fhe product of a spatial wave function 0n(r,) and a spin function % i). For a fermion with spin such as an electron, there are just two spin states, which we designate by a(i) for m = and f i) for Therefore, for two particles there are three... 

These four antisymmetric wave functions are normalized if the single-particle spatial wave functions singlet state occurs... 

A simple product 5 = XiC i) X2( 2) XiC i) 3Cj( j)-"Xn( n) 15 not acceptable as a model wave function for fermions because it assigns a particular one-electron function to a particular electron (for example X to X]) and hence violates the fact that electrons are indistinguishable. In addition,... 

However, billiard balls are a pretty bad model for electrons. First of all, as discussed above, electrons are fermions and therefore have an antisymmetric wave function. Second, they are charged particles and interact through the Coulomb repulsion they try to stay away from each other as much as possible. Both of these properties heavily influence the pair density and we will now enter an in-depth discussion of these effects. Let us begin with an exposition of the consequences of the antisymmetry of the wave function. This is most easily done if we introduce the concept of the reduced density matrix for two electrons, which we call y2. This is a simple generalization of p2(x1 x2) given above according to... 

To understand how Kohn and Sham tackled this problem, we go back to the discussion of the Hartree-Fock scheme in Chapter 1. There, our wave function was a single Slater determinant SD constructed from N spin orbitals. While the Slater determinant enters the HF method as the approximation to the true N-electron wave function, we showed in Section 1.3 that 4>sd can also be looked upon as the exact wave function of a fictitious system of N non-interacting electrons (that is electrons which behave as uncharged fermions and therefore do not interact with each other via Coulomb repulsion), moving in the elfective potential VHF. For this type of wave function the kinetic energy can be exactly expressed as... 

Of course, all this is not new but only a recapitulation of results from Chapter 1. The important connection to density functional theory is that we now go on to exploit the above kinetic energy expression, which is valid for non-interacting fermions, in order to compute the major fraction of the kinetic energy of our interacting system at hand. 

The next step is crucial. We have shown above that the exact wave functions of noninteracting fermions are Slater determinants.12 Thus, it will be possible to set up a noninteracting reference system, with a Hamiltonian in which we have introduced an effective, local potential Vs(r) ... 

Let us explore first the nature of the integrand E cl for the limiting cases. At X = 0 we are dealing with an interaction free system, and the only component which is not included in the classical term is due to the antisymmetry of the fermion wave function. Thus, E j° is composed of exchange only, there is no correlation whatsoever.19 Hence, the X = 0 limit of the integral in equation (6-25) simply corresponds to the exchange contribution of a Slater determinant, as for example, expressed through equation (5-18). Remember, that E ° can... 

The requirement that electrons (and fermions in general) have antisymmetric many-particle wave functions is called the Pauli principle, which can be stated as follows ... 

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