John Morrison

Ingvar Lindgren

In the new edition only minor modifications have been made. Some print ing errors have been corrected and a few clarifications have been made. In recent years the activity in relativistic many-body theory has increased con siderably, but this field falls outside the scope of this book. A brief summary of the recent developments, however, has been included in the section on "relativistic effects" in Chap. 14. In addition, only a very limited number of references have been added, without any systematic updating of the material. Goteborg, December 1985 l. Lindgren· J. Morrison Preface to the First Edition This book has developed through a series of lectures on atomic theory given these last eight years at Chalmers University of Technology and several oth er research centers. These courses were intended to make the basic elements of atomic theory available to experimentalists working with the hyperfine structure and the optical properties of atoms and to provide some insight into recent developments in the theory.

Atomic Many-Body Theory

This book gives a comprehensive account of relativistic many-body perturbation theory, based upon field theory. After some introductory chapters about time-independent and time dependent many-body perturbation theory (MBPT), the standard techniques of S-matrix and Green’s functions are reviewed. Next, the newly introduced covariant-evolution-operator method is described, which can be used, like the S-matrix method, for calculations in quantum electrodynamics (QED). Unlike the S-matrix method, this has a structure that is similar to that of MBPT and therefore can serve as basis for a unified theory. Such an approach is developed in the final chapters, and its equivalence to the Bethe-Salpeter equation is demonstrated. Possible applications are discussed and numerical illustrations given.

Ingvar Lindgren

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