Where can I find perturbation theory formulas up to fourth order?

jeffreydk
Messages
133
Reaction score
0
Does anybody happen to know where to find the perturbation theory formulas for the energies and states up to fourth order? I have to do a calculation up to this order and don't want to have to derive them if I don't have to (I know that Wikipedia has high order energies, but they only have the states up to second order).

Thanks very much for your help.
 
Physics news on Phys.org
Well, my QM book recommends for fourth and fifth order: Niholas Wheeler's Higher-Order Spectral Perturbation. I haven't read this myself so I'm not sure what exactly is in there...

As far as I know, this is also just for non-degenerate perturbation theory.
 
Thank you very much for the suggestion. I am working with a non-degenerate case so I'll take a look.
 
In my own experience, when it becomes necessary to go beyond 2nd order PT, I generally just set up the variational matrix (in the basis of unperturbed states) and diagonalize it ... that gets all (or at least many) of the higher order PT terms in there implicitly. I don't know if that would be workable for you, but it is probably not any more work than working out the fourth order PT terms ...
 
I am not sure if this belongs in the biology section, but it appears more of a quantum physics question. Mike Wiest, Associate Professor of Neuroscience at Wellesley College in the US. In 2024 he published the results of an experiment on anaesthesia which purported to point to a role of quantum processes in consciousness; here is a popular exposition: https://neurosciencenews.com/quantum-process-consciousness-27624/ As my expertise in neuroscience doesn't reach up to an ant's ear...
Insights auto threads is broken atm, so I'm manually creating these for new Insight articles. Towards the end of the first lecture for the Qiskit Global Summer School 2025, Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, Olivia Lanes (Global Lead, Content and Education IBM) stated... Source: https://www.physicsforums.com/insights/quantum-entanglement-is-a-kinematic-fact-not-a-dynamical-effect/ by @RUTA
I am reading WHAT IS A QUANTUM FIELD THEORY?" A First Introduction for Mathematicians. The author states (2.4 Finite versus Continuous Models) that the use of continuity causes the infinities in QFT: 'Mathematicians are trained to think of physical space as R3. But our continuous model of physical space as R3 is of course an idealization, both at the scale of the very large and at the scale of the very small. This idealization has proved to be very powerful, but in the case of Quantum...
Back
Top