Self-consistent approximations for correlation functions in the theory of triplet pairing superfluidity in3He

A self-consistent and “spin conserving” approximation scheme is developed for the two-particle correlation functions in superfluid³He. It is shown that the irreducible vertex part occuring in the Bethe-Salpeter equation for the generalized correlation function (having 4⁴ components) must be equal to the functional derivative of the approximate self-energy part with respect to the Green's function. The theory is specialized to the Hartree-Fock approximation yielding the RPA susceptibility belowT _c . An important feature of the resulting diagrammatic expansion is that the spin-fluctuation effects in the superfluid phase arise from infinite iteration of pairs of anomalous propagators inboth the particle-hole and in the particle-particle channels.