Quasiparticle Effective Mass of the Three-Dimensional Fermi Liquid by Quantum Monte Carlo

TL;DR

This paper uses diffusion Monte Carlo methods to calculate the quasiparticle effective mass in a 3D electron gas, revealing its dependence on density and magnetic state, and clarifying previous theoretical controversies.

Contribution

It provides the first systematic DMC calculations of the quasiparticle effective mass across different densities and magnetic states in 3D electron gases.

Findings

Effective mass decreases with reduced density.

No reduction in occupied bandwidth at density r_s=4.

Results clarify theoretical debates on quasiparticle properties.

Abstract

According to Landau's Fermi liquid theory, the main properties of the quasiparticle excitations of an electron gas are embodied in the effective mass $m^*$, which determines the energy of a single quasiparticle, and the Landau interaction function, which indicates how the energy of a quasiparticle is modified by the presence of other quasiparticles. This simple paradigm underlies most of our current understanding of the physical and chemical behavior of metallic systems. The quasiparticle effective mass of the three-dimensional homogeneous electron gas has been the subject of theoretical controversy and there is a lack of experimental data. In this work, we deploy diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) methods to calculate $m^*$ as a function of density for paramagnetic and ferromagnetic three-dimensional homogeneous electron gases. The DMC results indicate that $m^*$ decreases when the density is reduced, especially in the ferromagnetic case. The DMC quasiparticle energy bands exclude the possibility of a reduction in the occupied bandwidth relative to that of the free-electron model at density parameter $r_s=4$, which corresponds to Na metal.