Abstract: | A variational method is studied based on the minimum of energy variance. The method is tested on exactly soluble problems in quantum mechanics, and is shown to be a useful tool whenever the properties of states are more relevant than the eigenvalues. In quantum field theory the method provides a consistent second-order extension to the Gaussian effective potential. PACS. 03.65.-w, 11.10.-z, 05.30.-d Received: 28 June 2005, Published online: 13 September 2005 |