Narrow Results

We present an ideal system of interacting fermions where the solutions of the many-body Schrödinger equation can be obtained without making approximations. These exact solutions are used to test the validity of two many-body effective approaches, the Hartree–Fock and the random phase approximation theories. The description of the ground state done by the effective theories improves with increasing number of particles.

It is shown that the random-phase approximation (RPA) method with its nonlinear higher generalization, which was previously considered as approximation except for a very limited case, reproduces the exact solutions of the Lipkin model. The nonlinear higher RPA is based on an equation nonlinear on eigenvectors and includes many particle-many hole components in the creation operator of the excited states. We demonstrate the exact character of solutions analytically for the particle number $N=2$ and, numerically, for $N=8$. This finding indicates that the nonlinear higher RPA is equivalent to the exact Schrödinger equation, which opens up new possibilities for realistic calculations in many-body problems.