The Bethe Wavefunction

Translation of an influential book on exactly solvable models of many-body physics for graduate students and researchers in physics.

Michel Gaudin (Author), Jean-Sébastien Caux (Translated by)

9781107045859, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 6 March 2014

360 pages, 27 b/w illus.
25.3 x 18 x 1.9 cm, 0.83 kg

'The book presents in detail many important computations. This allows the beginner in the field to learn many of the techniques that are relevant for new applications. … [This] is an outstanding book which every library should have. It will be extremely useful both for graduate and postgraduate students. The book can also serve as a source of inspiration for an advanced physics course on integrable models both in condensed matter theory and statistical physics. The translator has done a great job making this book accessible to the much wider audience it deserves.' Gunter M. Schütz, Contemporary Physics

Michel Gaudin's book La fonction d'onde de Bethe is a uniquely influential masterpiece on exactly solvable models of quantum mechanics and statistical physics. Available in English for the first time, this translation brings his classic work to a new generation of graduate students and researchers in physics. It presents a mixture of mathematics interspersed with powerful physical intuition, retaining the author's unmistakably honest tone. The book begins with the Heisenberg spin chain, starting from the coordinate Bethe Ansatz and culminating in a discussion of its thermodynamic properties. Delta-interacting bosons (the Lieb-Liniger model) are then explored, and extended to exactly solvable models associated to a reflection group. After discussing the continuum limit of spin chains, the book covers six- and eight-vertex models in extensive detail, from their lattice definition to their thermodynamics. Later chapters examine advanced topics such as multi-component delta-interacting systems, Gaudin magnets and the Toda chain.

Foreword Michel Gaudin
Translator's note
Introduction
1. The chain of spin-1/2 atoms
2. Thermodynamic limit of the Heisenberg-Ising chain
3. Thermodynamics of the spin-1/2 chain: limiting cases
4. ?-interacting bosons
5. Bethe wavefunctions associated to a reflective group
6. Continuum limit of the spin chain
7. The six-vertex model
8. The eight-vertex model
9. The eight-vertex model: eigenvectors and thermodynamics
10. Identical particles with ?-interactions
11. Identical particles with ?-interactions: general solution for two internal states
12. Identical particles with ?-interactions: general solution for n components and limiting cases
13. Various corollaries and extensions
14. On the Toda chain
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Mathematical physics [PHU], Statistical physics [PHS], Physics [PH], Mathematics & science [P]