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Abstract

Cumulants represent a natural language for expressing macroscopic properties of a solid. We shaw that cumulants are subject to a nontrivial geometry. This geometry provides an intuitive understanding of a number of cumulant relations which have been obtained so far by using algebraic considerations. We give general expressions for their infinitesimal and finite transformations and represent a cumulant wave operator through an integration over a path in the Hilbert space. Cases are investigated where this integration can be done exactly. An expression of the ground-state wave function in terms of the cumulant wave operator is derived. In the second part of the article, we derive the cumulant counterpart of Faddeev's equations and show its connection to the method of increments. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.