Interaction as stochastic noise

Abstract

Interaction is so ubiquitous that imaging a world free from it is a difficult fantasy exercise. At the same time, in understanding any complex physical system, our ability of accounting for the mutual interaction of its constituents is often insufficient when not the restraining factor. Many strategies have been devised to control particle-particle interaction and explore the diverse regimes, from weak to strong interaction. Beautiful examples of these achievements are the experiments on Bose condensates, or the recent experiments on the dynamics of spin chains. Here I introduce another possibility, namely replacing the particle-particle interaction with an external stochastic field, and once again reducing the dynamics of a many-body system to the dynamics of single-particle systems. The theory is exact, in the sense that no approximations are introduced in decoupling the many-body system in its non-interacting sub-parts. Moreover, the equations of motion are linear, and no unknown external potential is inserted.