Ground state and charge renormalization in a nonlinear model of relativistic atoms

DOI10.1007/S00220-008-0660-9zbMATH Open1180.81155arXiv0712.2911OpenAlexW2027391056MaRDI QIDQ731301FDOQ731301

Authors: Philippe Gravejat, M. Lewin, Éric Séré 

Publication date: 2 October 2009

Published in: Communications in Mathematical Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: We study the reduced Bogoliubov-Dirac-Fock (BDF) energy which allows to describe relativistic electrons interacting with the Dirac sea, in an external electrostatic potential. The model can be seen as a mean-field approximation of Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) where photons and the so-called exchange term are neglected. A state of the system is described by its one-body density matrix, an infinite rank self-adjoint operator which is a compact perturbation of the negative spectral projector of the free Dirac operator (the Dirac sea). We study the minimization of the reduced BDF energy under a charge constraint. We prove the existence of minimizers for a large range of values of the charge, and any positive value of the coupling constant $alpha$. Our result covers neutral and positively charged molecules, provided that the positive charge is not large enough to create electron-positron pairs. We also prove that the density of any minimizer is an $L^1$ function and compute the effective charge of the system, recovering the usual renormalization of charge: the physical coupling constant is related to $alpha$ by the formula $alph{a}_{mphys}simeqalpha(1+2alpha/(3pi)logLambda{)}^{-1}$, where $Lambda$ is the ultraviolet cut-off. We eventually prove an estimate on the highest number of electrons which can be bound by a nucleus of charge $Z$. In the nonrelativistic limit, we obtain that this number is $leq2Z$, recovering a result of Lieb. This work is based on a series of papers by Hainzl, Lewin, Sere and Solovej on the mean-field approximation of no-photon QED.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/0712.2911

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Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Perturbative methods of renormalization applied to problems in quantum field theory (81T15) Electromagnetic interaction; quantum electrodynamics (81V10) Atomic physics (81V45)

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Cited In (21)

• Renormalization of Dirac's polarized vacuum
• A new definition of the Dirac-Fock ground state
• Derivation of the magnetic Euler-Heisenberg energy
• Existence of minimizers for the Dirac-Fock model of crystals
• Title not available (Why is that?)
• On the ultraviolet limit of the Pauli-Fierz Hamiltonian in the Lieb-Loss model
• The positronium and the dipositronium in a Hartree-Fock approximation of quantum electrodynamics
• Existence of ground state of an electron in the BDF approximation
• Title not available (Why is that?)
• Static electron-positron pair creation in strong fields for a non-linear Dirac model
• Lowest energy states in nonrelativistic QED: atoms and ions in motion
• Charge renormalization and static electron/positron pair production for a nonlinear Dirac model with weak interactions
• Renormalization and asymptotic expansion of Dirac's polarized vacuum
• Construction of the Pauli-Villars-regulated Dirac vacuum in electromagnetic fields
• The dielectric permittivity of crystals in the reduced Hartree-Fock approximation
• Self-consistent solution for the polarized vacuum in a no-photon QED model
• The microscopic origin of the macroscopic dielectric permittivity of crystals: A mathematical viewpoint
• Relativistic electrons coupled with Newtonian nuclear dynamics
• Ground state properties of graphene in Hartree-Fock theory
• Differential equation for the ground-state density of a model spin-compensated atom in an external potential
• Ground states of atoms and molecules in non-relativistic QED

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