Hierarchy of correlations: Application to Green's functions and interacting topological phases

Abstract: We study the many-body physics of different quantum systems using a hierarchy of correlations, which corresponds to a generalization of the $1/\mathcal{Z}$ hierarchy. The decoupling scheme obtained from this hierarchy is adapted to calculate double-time Green's functions, and due to its non-perturbative nature, we describe quantum phase transition and topological features characteristic of strongly correlated phases. As concrete examples we consider spinless fermions in a dimers chain and in a honeycomb lattice. We present analytical results which are valid for any dimension and can be generalized to different types of interactions (e.g., long range interactions), which allows us to shed light on the effect of quantum correlations in a very systematic way. Furthermore, we show that this approach provides an efficient framework for the calculation of topological invariants in interacting systems.