Hubbard–Stratonovich transformation

The Hubbard–Stratonovich (HS) transformation is an exact mathematical transformation invented by Russian physicist Ruslan L. Stratonovich and popularized by British physicist John Hubbard. It is used to convert a particle theory into its respective field theory by linearizing the density operator in the many-body interaction term of the Hamiltonian and introducing an auxiliary scalar field. It is defined via the integral identity

${\displaystyle \exp \left\{-{\frac {a}{2}}x^{2}\right\}={\sqrt {\frac {1}{2\pi a}}}\;\int _{-\infty }^{\infty }\exp \left[-{\frac {y^{2}}{2a}}-ixy\right]\,dy,}$

where the real constant ${\displaystyle a>0}$. The basic idea of the HS transformation is to reformulate a system of particles interacting through two-body potentials into a system of independent particles interacting with a fluctuating field. The procedure is widely used in polymer physics, classical particle physics, spin glass theory, and electronic structure theory.