The symmetric heavy-light ansatz

The symmetric heavy-light ansatz is a method for finding the ground state of any dilute unpolarized system of attractive two-component fermions. Operationally it can be viewed as a generalization of the Kohn-Sham equations in density functional theory applied to N -body density correlations. While the original Hamiltonian has an exact Z(2) symmetry, the heavy-light ansatz breaks this symmetry by skewing the mass ratio of the two components. In the limit where one component is infinitely heavy, the many-body problem can be solved in terms of single-particle orbitals. The original Z(2) symmetry is recovered by enforcing Z(2) symmetry as a constraint on N -body density correlations for the two components. For the 1D, 2D, and 3D attractive Hubbard models the method is in very good agreement with exact Lanczos calculations for few-body systems at arbitrary coupling. For the 3D attractive Hubbard model there is very good agreement with lattice Monte Carlo results for many-body systems in the limit of infinite scattering length.