Abstract
In this chapter we discuss the Bethe–Salpeter equation and its relation to the procedure we have developed so far. We shall start by summarizing the original derivations of the equation by Bethe and Salpeter and by Gell-Mann and Low, which represented the first rigorous covariant treatments of the bound-state problem. We shall demonstrate that this field-theoretical treatment is completely compatible with the presentation made here. The treatments of Bethe and Salpeter and of Gell-Mann and Low concern the single-reference situation, while our procedure is more general. Later in this chapter we extend the Bethe–Salpeter equation to the multi-reference case, which will lead to what we refer to as the Bethe–Salpeter–Bloch equation in analogy with corresponding equation in MBPT.
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© 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
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Lindgren, I. (2016). The Bethe–Salpeter Equation. In: Relativistic Many-Body Theory. Springer Series on Atomic, Optical, and Plasma Physics, vol 63. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15386-5_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15386-5_10
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Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
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Online ISBN: 978-3-319-15386-5
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