Two types of series expansions valid at strong coupling

Abstract

It is known that perturbative expansions in powers of the coupling in quantum mechanics (QM) and quantum field theory (QFT) are asymptotic series. This can be useful at weak coupling but fails at strong coupling. In this work, we present two types of series expansions valid at strong coupling. We apply the series to a basic integral as well as a QM path integral containing a quadratic and quartic term with coupling constant λ. The first series is the usual asymptotic one, where the quartic interaction is expanded in powers of λ. The second series is an expansion of the quadratic part where the interaction is left alone. This yields an absolutely convergent series in inverse powers of λ valid at strong coupling. For the basic integral, we revisit the first series and identify what makes it diverge even though the original integral is finite. We fix the problem and obtain, remarkably, a series in powers of the coupling which is absolutely convergent and valid at strong coupling. We explain how this series avoids Dyson’s argument on convergence. We then consider the QM path integral (discretized with time interval divided into N equal segments). As before, the second series is absolutely convergent and we obtain analytical expressions in inverse powers of λ for the nth order terms by taking functional derivatives of generalized hypergeometric functions. The expressions are functions of N and we work them out explicitly up to third order. The general procedure has been implemented in a Mathematica program that generates the expressions at any order n. We present numerical results at strong coupling for different values of N starting at N = 2. The series matches the exact numerical value for a given N (up to a certain accuracy). The continuum is formally reached when N → ∞ but in practice this can be reached at small N.