Quantum coherent operators: A generalization of coherent states

We introduce a technique to compare different, but related, quantum systems, thereby generalizing the way that coherent states are used to compare quantum systems to classical systems in semiclassical analysis. We then use this technique to estimate the dependence of the free energy of the quantum Heisenberg model on the spin value, and to estimate the relation between the ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic free energies.Work supported in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation grant PHY-9019433.Work supported in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation grant DMS-9002416.     

The positivity of the pressure in Thomas Fermi theory

We prove the positivity of the pressure and compressibility for neutral systems in the Thomas-Fermi theory of molecules. Our results include some new properties of the Thomas-Fermi potential and a proof that the kinetic energy is superadditive.Work partially supported by U.S. National Science Foundation grant MCS 75-21684 A02On leave from Department of Physics, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile     

A proof of part of Haldane's conjecture on spin chains

It has been argued that the spectra of infinite length, translation and U(1) invariant, anisotropic, antiferromagnetic spin s chains differ according to whether s is integral or 1/2 integral: There is a range of parameters for which there is a unique ground state with a gap above it in the integral case, but no such range exists for the 1/2 integral case. We prove the above statement for 1/2 integral spin. We also prove that for all s, finite length chains have a unique ground state for a wide range of parameters. The argument was extended to SU(n) chains, and we prove analogous results in that case as well.Work partially supported by U.S. National Science Foundation grant PHY80-19754 and by the A.P. Sloan Foundation.Work partially supported by U.S. National Science Foundation grant PHY-85-15288.     

Pointwise bounds on eigenfunctions and wave packets inN-body quantum systems IV

We systematize the study of reflection positivity in statistical mechanical models, and thereby two techniques in the theory of phase transitions: the method ofinfrared bounds and the chessboard method of estimating contour probabilities in Peierls arguments. We illustrate the ideas by applying them to models with long range interactions in one and two dimensions. Additional applications are discussed in a second paper.Research partially supported by US National Science Foundation under Grant MPS-75-11864Research partially supported by Canadian National Research Council under Grant A4015Research partially supported by US National Science Foundation under Grant MCS-75-21684-A01     

Long range order in the anisotropic quantum ferromagnetic Heisenberg model

We study the anisotropic quantum mechanical ferromagnetic Heisenberg model. By anisotropic we mean that thex andy exchange constants are equal but smaller than thez exchange constant. We show that for any amount of anisotropy there is long range order in two or more dimensions at low enough temperature. We also develop a convergent low temperature expansion and use it to prove exponential decay of the truncated correlation functions.Research partially supported by U.S. National Science Foundation under Grant PHY8116101 AO 3     

Lattice models for liquid crystals

A problem in the theory of liquid crystals is to construct a model system which at low temperatures displays long-range orientational order, but not translational order in all directions. We present five lattice models (two two-dimensional and three three-dimensional) of hard-core particles with attractive interactions and prove (using reflection positivity and the Peierls argument) that they have orientational order at low temperatures; the two-dimensional models have no such ordering if the attractive interaction is not present. We cannot prove that these models do not have complete translational order, but their zero-temperature states are such that we are led to conjecture that complete translational order is always absent.Work of EHL supported by U.S. National Science Foundation Grant MCS 75-21684 A02. Financial assistance from the Danish Natural Science Research Council is also gratefully acknowledged.     

Stability of coulomb systems with magnetic fields

The ground state energy of an atom in the presence of an external magnetic filedB (with the electron spin-field interaction included) can be arbitrarity negative whenB is arbitrarily large. We inquire whether stability can be restored by adding the self energy of the field, B ². For a hydrogenic like atom we prove that there is a critical nuclear charge,z _c , such that the atom is stable forz<z _c and unstable forz>z _c .Work partically supported by U.S. National Scinece Foundation grant DMS-8405264 during the author's stay at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, USAWork partially supported by U.S. National Science Foundation grant PHY-8116101-A03Work partially supported by U.S. and Swiss National Science Foundation Cooperative Science Program INT-8503858. Current address: Institut f. Mathematik, FU Berlin, Arnimallee 3, D-1000 Berlin 33     

Lower bounds for resonance widths in potential and obstacle scattering

Explicit lower bounds are given for the size of the imaginary parts of resonances for Schrödinger operators with non-trapping or trapping potentials, and for the Dirichlet Laplacian in the exterior of a star-shaped obstacle, both acting in three dimensions.Work partially supported by DiUC/FONDECYT (Chile)Work partially supported by U.S. National Science Foundation grant DMS 8705610     

The Thermodynamic Limit for Matter Interacting with Coulomb Forces and with the Quantized Electromagnetic Field: I. The Lower Bound

The proof of the existence of the thermodynamic limit for electrons and nuclei interacting via the Coulomb potential, was accomplished decades ago in the framework of non-relativistic quantum mechanics, . This result did not take account of interactions caused by magnetic fields, however, (the spin-spin interaction, in particular) or of the quantized nature of the electromagnetic field. Recent progress has made it possible to undertake such a proof in the context of non-relativistic QED. This paper contains one part of such a proof by giving a lower bound to the free energy that is proportional to the number of particles and which takes account of the fact that the field, unlike the particles, is never confined to a finite volume. In the earlier proof the lower bound was a ‘two line’ corollary of the ‘stability of matter’. In QED the proof is much more complicated.©2004 by the authors. This paper may be reproduced, in its entirety, for non-commercial purposes.Work partially supported by U.S. National Science Foundation grant PHY 01-39984.Work partially supported by U.S. National Science Foundation grant DMS 03-00349.     

Upper bound on the free energy of the spin 1/2 Heisenberg ferromagnet

The authors obtain an upper bound on the free energy of the spin 1/2 Heisenberg ferromagnet. The zero field bound is, at low temperature, similar to the formula given by the magnon approximation. That is, its functional dependence on temperature is the same but the constant is different.Work partially supported by U.S. National Science Foundation grants DMS 9196047 (JGC) and DMS 9002416 (JPS).     

Correlation inequalities and the thermodynamic limit for classical and quantum continuous systems

We use Ginibre's general formulation of Griffiths' inequalities to derive new correlation inequalities for two-component classical and quantum mechanical systems of distinguishable particles interacting via two body potentials of positive type. As a consequence we obtain existence of the thermodynamic limit of the thermodynamic and correlation functions in the grand canonical ensemble at arbitrary temperatures and chemical potentials. For a large class of systems we show that the limiting correlation functions are clustering. (In a subsequent article these results are extended to the correlation functions of two-component quantum mechanical gases with Bose-Einstein statistics). Finally, a general construction of the thermodynamic limit of the pressure for gases which are not H-stable, above collapse temperature, is presented.Research supported in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation under grant MPS 75-11864A Sloan Foundation Fellow     

On the failure of subadditivity of the Wigner–Yanase entropy

It was recently shown by Hansen that the Wigner–Yanase entropy is, for general states of quantum systems, not subadditive with respect to decomposition into two subsystems, although this property is known to hold for pure states. We investigate the question whether the weaker property of subadditivity for pure states with respect to decomposition into more than two subsystems holds. This property would have interesting applications in quantum chemistry. We show, however, that it does not hold in general, and provide a counterexample. Work partially supported by U.S. National Science Foundation grant PHY-0353181 and by an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship. This paper may be reproduced, in its entirety, for non-commerical purposes.     

The Hartree-Fock theory for Coulomb systems

For neutral atoms and molecules and positive ions and radicals, we prove the existence of solutions of the Hartree-Fock equations which minimize the Hartree-Fock energy. We establish some properties of the solutions including exponential falloff.Research partially supported by U.S. National Science Foundation Grant MCS-75-21684Research partially supported by U.S. National Science Foundation under Grants MPS-75-11864 and MPS-75-20638. On leave from Departments of Mathematics and Physics, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ08540, USA     

Fluctuations of one dimensional Ginzburg-Landau models in nonequilibrium

We study the fluctuation of one dimensional Ginzburg-Landau models in nonequilibrium along the hydrodynamic (diffusion) limit. The hydrodynamic limit has been proved to be a nonlinear diffusion equation by Fritz, Guo-Papanicolaou-Varadhan, etc. We proved that if the potential is uniformly convex then the fluctuation process is governed by an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process whose drift term is obtained by formally linearizing the hydrodynamic equation.Work partially supported by the National Science Foundation under grant no. DMS 8806731 and DMS 9101196     

Hydrodynamical limit for a Hamiltonian system with weak noise

Starting from a general hamiltonian system with superstable pairwise potential, we construct a stochastic dynamics by adding a noise term which exchanges the momenta of nearby particles. We prolve that, in the scaling limit, the time conserved quantities, energy, momenta and density, satisfy the Euler equation of conservation laws up to a fixed timet provided that the Euler equation has a smooth solution with a given initial data up to timet. The strength of the noise term is chosen to be very small (but nonvanishing) so that it disappears in the scaling limit.Research partially supported by U.S. National Science Foundation grants DMS 89001682, DMS 920-1222 and a grant from ARO, DAAL03-92-G-0317Research partially supported by U.S. National Science Foundation grants DMS-9101196, DMS-9100383, and PHY-9019433-A01, Sloan Foundation Fellowship and David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship     

Phase transitions and reflection positivity. II. Lattice systems with short-range and Coulomb interactions

We discuss applications of the abstract scheme of part I of this work, in particular of infrared bounds and chessboard estimates, to proving the existence of phase transitions in lattice systems. Included are antiferromagnets in an external field, hard-core exclusion models, classical and quantum Coulomb lattice gases, and six-vertex models.Research partially supported by Canadian National Research Council Grant A4015 and U.S. National Science Foundation Grants PHY-77-18762, MCS-75-21684-A02, and MCS-78-01885.     

AnS matrix theory for classical nonlinear physics

The basic concepts appropriate for anS matrix theory for classical nonlinear physics are formulated here. These concepts are illustrated by a discussion of shock wave diffraction patterns. Other information concerning solutions of non-linear conservation laws is surveyed, so that a coherent picture of this theory can be seen. Within thisS matrix framework, a number of open problems as well as a few solved ones will be discussed.Dedicated to John A. Wheeler on the occasion of his 75th birthday.Supported in part by the National Science Foundation, grant DMS-831229.Supported in part by the Aplied Mathematical Sciences subprogram of the Office of Energy Research, U.S. Department of Energy, under contract DE-AC02-76ER03077.Supported in part by the Army Research Office, grant DAAG29-83-K-0007.Work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy.     

Phase transitions in quantum spin systems with isotropic and nonisotropic interactions

We prove the existence of spontaneous magnetization at sufficiently low temperature, and hence of a phase transition, in a variety of quantum spin systems in three or more dimensions. The isotropic spin 1/2x-y model and the Heisenberg antiferromagnet with spin 1, 3/2,...and with nearest neighbor interactions on a simple cubic lattice are included.Research supported by U.S. National Science Foundation under grants GP-40768X (F.J.D.), MCS 75-21684 (E.H.L.), and GP-39048 (B.S.).Alfred Sloan Fellow.     

Convergence to equilibrium in a system of reacting polymers

Chemical kinetics of a system of reacting polymers is modelled by an equation which shares certain properties with Boltzmann's equation. Being more tractable, however, this evolution may be of an illustrative value for the latter. The existence and uniqueness of solutions are analysed. We derive an entropy production inequality which is used to prove global exponential decay of the free energy. With its aid a uniform rate for strong convergence to equilibrium is proven. The generators of the linearlized flow at the vicinity of the equilibria are diagonalized.Work partly supported by U.S. National Science Foundation grant MCS 75-21684 A02     

Probabilistic methods for stationary problems of linear transport theory

The steady state of a system of independent particles which undergo elastic collisions can be expressed in terms of the absorption probabilities of the associated Markov process. For the slab albedo problem, this representation enables the application of probabilistic methods to obtain explicit upper and lower bounds on the steady-state density. In particular, the bounds prove the 1/L, decrease of the steady-state flux as a function of the slab widthL (Fick's law).Supported in part by U.S. National Science Foundation grant MCS 75-21684 A02.On leave of absence from Fachbereich Physik, UniversitÄt Mönchen. Work supported by a DFG research fellowship.