Starting from the equations of motion expressed as ground-state expectation values, we have derived a higher-order random-phase approximation (RPA) for excitation frequencies of low-lying states. The matrix elements in the expectation value are obtained up to terms linear in the ground-state correlation coefficients. We represent the ground state as $e^U|\mathrm{HF}〉$, where $U$ is a linear combination of two particle-hole operators, and $|\mathrm{HF}〉$ is the Hartree-Fock ground state. We then retain terms only up to those linear in the correlation coefficients in the equation determining the ground state. This equation and that for the excitation energy are then solved self-consistently. We do not make the quasiboson approximation in this procedure, and explicitly discuss the overcounting characteristics of this approximation. The resulting equations have the same form as those of the RPA, but this higher RPA removes many deficiencies of the RPA.

• Received 10 June 1970

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.2.2208