Evaluation of overlaps between arbitrary Fermionic quasiparticle vacua

Abstract

We derive an expression that allows for the unambiguous evaluation of the overlap between two arbitrary quasiparticle vacua, including its sign. Our expression is based on the Pfaffian of a skew-symmetric matrix, extending the formula recently proposed by [L. M. Robledo, Phys. Rev. C 79, 021302(R) (2009)] to the most general case, including the one of the overlap between two different blocked n-quasiparticle states for either even or odd systems. The powerfulness of the method is illustrated for a few typical matrix elements that appear in realistic angular-momentum-restored Generator-Coordinate Method calculations when breaking time-reversal invariance and using the full model space of occupied single-particle states.