Green's Function Method for Quantum Corrections to the Thomas-Fermi Model of the Atom

Abstract

A systematic method is presented for deriving the Thomas-Fermi equation for an atom and the quantum corrections from the many-body description. The novel feature of the method is that it does not require any a priori assumptions about the assignment of electrons to fully occupied single-particle states or about the distribution of electrons in phase space, but shows instead that the distribution which is usually assumed, or derived from the assumption of fully occupied single particle states, is a direct consequence of specifying that the many particle system is in its ground state. The procedure used in the derivation is the expansion of the mixed position-momentum representation of the Green's function in a series of powers of $\hslash$. The lowest order term is found to correspond with the Thomas-Fermi density. The form of the higher order terms, which are to be considered as corrections to zeroth order term, depends on the approximations made in the many-body equations for obtaining the Green's function. This paper deals only with the Hartree-Fock approximation, but the methods presented here allow generalization to other approximations which can include correlation effects.