Second quantization and the electron gas

A single electron

For a single electron we have the time-independent Schrodinger

equation

Where

p is the operator . This equation has solutions for an infinite

number of energies = with a complete set of
eigenfunctions ).

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 This forms a complete set, any other function can be expanded in
terms of them. The ) for different are orthogonal, meaning that

where dr is an abbreviation for dx dy dz; u* is the complex conjugate of u,

For a normalized wavefunctions ) , integral is equal to unity for =

wavefunctions like ) are continuous

The integral can be thought of as

Infinitesimal volume

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 Consider the column vector (i.e, the vertical array of numbers)

And ∗ ) as the row vector

The sum in the previous expression is just the matrix product of ∗ )

and ́ ).
We adopt Dirac notation to write the row vector ∗ ) as and the
column vector ́ ) as Then we write the integral of Eq. ? As
, For normalized wavefunction we get
An example of such a set of functions ) are the plane waves
that are a solution of the Shrodinger equation

Consider a cubic box of

Then we can consider

Applying the periodic boundary conditions

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 Hence

Where mx , my , mz are integers. Kα form a simple cubic lattice in k-space.

The density of allowed points are or , independent of K
The summation over α can be considered as the summation over allowed
values of K.

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and then taking the integral

This can be written as

Then we get

We can find

Which can be written in Dirac notation as

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 This leads to consider an operators

It is not a number, it is an operator

Gives ( a number ) X wavefunctions

This notation can be extended by dealing with an integral like

Replacing the integral by summation

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 We are considering V(r) as a diagonal matrix

Then the previous matrix product can be written as

Making use of the identity

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The operator annihilates an electron in the state and creates
one in the state

For an empty sate wavefunction

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 We can write

and

The same way, we can write the

kinetic energy operator
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