MANY-BODY PROBLEM IN QUANTUM STATISTICAL MECHANICS. I. GENERAL FORMULATION

A formulation is given whereby the grand partition function of a many- body system satisfying BoseEinstein or Fermi-Dirac statistics is expressed in terms of certain U functions defined ior the same system with Boltzmam statistics. lt is then shown that these U functions can be evaluated in successive approximations in terms of a binary kernel B which can be computed from a solution of the two-body problem. The approach to the limit of infinite volume is studied. The example of a hard sphere interaction is discussed in some detail. (auth)