Wick Theorem for General Initial States

Understand

We present a compact and simplified proof of a generalized Wick theorem to calculate the Green's function of bosonic and fermionic systems in an arbitrary initial state.

• It is shown that the decomposition of the non-interacting $n$-particle Green's function is equivalent to solving a boundary problem for the Martin-Schwinger hierarchy; for non-correlated initial states a one-line proof of the standard Wick theorem is given.
• Our result leads to new self-energy diagrams and an elegant relation with those of the imaginary-time formalism is derived.
• The theorem is easy to use and can be combined with any ground-state numerical technique to calculate time-dependent properties.