Many-body problem

The many-body problem is a general

name for a vast category of physical
problems pertaining to the properties of
microscopic systems made of a large
number of interacting particles.
Microscopic here implies that quantum
mechanics has to be used to provide an
accurate description of the system. A large
number can be anywhere from 3 to infinity
(in the case of a practically infinite,
homogeneous or periodic system, such as
a crystal), although three- and four-body
systems can be treated by specific means
(respectively the Faddeev and Faddeev-
Yakubovsky equations) and are thus
sometimes separately classified as few-
body systems. In such a quantum system,
the repeated interactions between
particles create quantum correlations, or
entanglement. As a consequence, the
wave function of the system is a
complicated object holding a large amount
of information, which usually makes exact
or analytical calculations impractical or
even impossible. Thus, many-body
theoretical physics most often relies on a
set of approximations specific to the
problem at hand, and ranks among the
most computationally intensive fields of
science.

Examples
Condensed matter physics (solid-state
physics, nanoscience,
superconductivity)
Bose–Einstein condensation and
Superfluids
Quantum chemistry (computational
chemistry, molecular physics)
Atomic physics
Molecular physics
 Nuclear physics (Nuclear structure,
nuclear reactions, nuclear matter)
Quantum chromodynamics (Lattice
QCD, hadron spectroscopy, QCD matter,
quark–gluon plasma)

Approaches
Mean-field theory and extensions (e.g.
Hartree–Fock, Random phase
approximation)
Dynamical mean field theory
Many-body perturbation theory and
Green's function-based methods
Configuration interaction
Coupled cluster
 Various Monte-Carlo approaches
Density functional theory
Lattice gauge theory
Matrix product state

Further reading
Jenkins, Stephen. "The Many Body
Problem and Density Functional
Theory" .
Thouless, D. J. (1972). The quantum
mechanics of many-body systems. New
York: Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-
691560-1.
Fetter, A. L.; Walecka, J. D. (2003).
Quantum Theory of Many-Particle
 Systems. New York: Dover. ISBN 0-486-
42827-3.
Nozières, P. (1997). Theory of Interacting
Fermi Systems. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-
201-32824-0.
Mattuck, R. D. (1976). A guide to
Feynman diagrams in the many-body
problem. New York: McGraw-Hill.
ISBN 0-07-040954-4.

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