Monotonic converging variational approximations to the functional integrals in quantum statistical mechanics (Q2761676)

The authors show that, for a very large class of quantum-mechanical systems (\(N\)-body systems of spinless particles with local interaction bounded from below), the partition function, regarded as a function of the coupling constant, is the Laplace transform of a positive measure whose support is the convex hull of the spectrum of the interaction. They derive from this result monotonic converging sequences of lower and upper bounds to the free energy of the system, as generalized Pade approximations, bounds which have a meaningful thermodynamic limit. The sequences converge for any value of temperature, density and coupling constant.