Inequivalent representations of commutator or anticommutator rings of field operators and their applications

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Abstract: Hamiltonian of a system in quantum field theory can give rise to infinitely many partition functions which correspond to infinitely many inequivalent representations of the canonical commutator or anticommutator rings of field operators. This implies that the system can theoretically exist in infinitely many Gibbs states. The system resides in the Gibbs state which corresponds to its minimal Helmholtz free energy at a given range of the thermodynamic variables. Individual inequivalent representations are associated with different thermodynamic phases of the system. The BCS Hamiltonian of superconductivity is chosen to be an explicit example for the demonstration of the important role of inequivalent representations in practical applications. Its analysis from the inequivalent representations' point of view has led to a recognition of a novel type of the superconducting phase transition.


In the framework of quantum field theory of many particle systems, in the thermodynamic limit, system have infinite number of freedom degrees. It has been pointed by Haag that the canonical commutation or anticommutation relations of field operators have several different inequivalent representations in this case. In this paper, there are constructed inequivalent representations of the canonical anticommutator ring of electron field operators entering the Hamiltonian of the BCS theory of superconductivity. First, it is constructed a certain class of inequivalent representations of the anticommutator ring of field operators by considering a complete set of anninhilation and creation operators of the fermion type and using the Haag approach for construction the inequivalent representations, however, for boson operators. This allows to generalize these inequivalent representations to other classes representations both for fermions and bosons. Then, it is shown how in practical calculations, one tacitly selects a single inequivalent representation by choosing an appropriate perturbation theory. For this aim the Hamiltonian of a system is divided into a sum of the unperturbed Hamiltonian and the perturbative part. Each inequivalent representation is constructed by selecting the unperturbed Hamiltonian in one of three forms. The first form is the electron kinetic energy operator. In this case, the spectrum of elementary excitations and the statistical average values valid in all orders of the perturbation theory. The second form corresponds to the standard BCS theory of superconductivity. The results obtained in this case for the average value of the same physical observable exhibit the important role of the inequivalent representations in practical applications. As third form, it is chosen a kind of an interpolation between the unperturbed Hamiltonians in the first and second forms. As a result of diagonalization of the Hamiltonian by using Bogoliubov-Valatin transformations, it is obtained the self-consistency condition for the gap function. Its consideration for thin film system leads to the relations for critical temperature and energy spectrum which, respectively, are qualitatively and quantitatively different from the relations, corresponding to the standard solutions of the BCS theory. Moreover, the behavior of the specific heat anomaly is qualitatively completely different from the corresponding solution of the BCS theory. At the same time, there is some correspondence with experimental data of high-temperature superconductors (HTS), and, therefore, the last inequivalent representation, perhaps, be relevant for describing the superconductivity of HTS.











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