Theory of Resonating Quantum Fluctuations in a Fermion System: Resonating Hartree-Fock Approximation

We develop a new general theory for large quantum fluctuations in a Fermion many-body system that cannot be described by fluctuations around the Hartree-Fock ground state but arises from resonance of different correlation structures. We start with an exact coherent state representation of a Fermion system on a unitary group. We show that the Hamiltonian in the coherent state representation has a close connection with the Hartree-Fock energy functional. From this, we can derive a new approximation called the resonating Hartree-Fock approximation in which a state is approximated by a superposition of non-orthogonal Slater determinants with different correlation structures. We derive the variation equations to determine a resonating Hartree-Fock wavefunction. We show that the resonance between degenerate broken symmetry Slater determinants may partially recover the symmetry. We discuss how to choose trial Slater determinants in a resonating Hartree-Fock wavefunction. We suggest that resonance of Slater determinats representing localized defects, such as solitons, polarons and breathers, produced in the long range order of the HF ground state may be the most important content of large quantum fluctuations in condensed matter systems.