A set of successively niore accurate self-consistent equations for the one-electron Green's functionhavebeen derived. They correspond to an expansion. in a screened potential rather than the bare Coulomb potential. The first equation is adequate for many purposes. Each equation follows from the demand that a corresponding expression for the total energy be stationary with respect to variations in the Green's function. The main information to be obtained, besides the total energy, is one-particle-like excitation spectra, i.e. , spectra characterized by the quantum numbers of a single particle. This includes the low-excitation spectra in metals as well as configurations in atoms, molecules, and solids with one electron outside or one electron missing from a closed. -shell structure. In the latter cases we obtain an approximate description by a modified Hartree-Pock equation involving a "Coulomb hole" and a static screened potential in the exchange term. As an example, spectra of some atoms are discussed. To investigate the convergence of successive approximations for the Green's function, extensive calculations have been made for the electron gas at a range of metallic densities. The results are expressed in terms of quasiparticle energies E(k} and quasiparticle interaction. :f(k, k ). The very first approximation gives a good value for the magnitude of E(k). To estimate the derivative of E(k) we need both the first-and the second-order terms. The derivative, and thus the specific heat, is found to diRer from the free-particle value by only a few percent. Our correction to the specific heat keeps the same sign down to the lowest alkali-metal densities, and is smaller than those obtained recently by Silverstein and by Rice. Our results for the paramagnetic susceptibility are unreliable in the alkali-metaldensity region owing to poor convergence of the expansion for f. Besides the proof of a modified LuttingerWard-Klein variational principle and a related self-consistency idea, there is not much new in principle in this paper. The emphasis is on the devcloIiment of a numerically manageable approximation scheme.

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The GW approximation (GWA) extends the well-known Hartree-Fock approximation (HFA) for the self-energy (exchange potential), by replacing the bare Coulomb potential v by the dynamically screened potential W, e.g. Vex = iGv is replaced by GW = iGW. Here G is the one-electron Green's function. The GWA like the HFA is self-consistent, which allows for solutions beyond perturbation theory, like say spin-density waves. In a first approximation, iGW is a sum of a statically screened exchange potential plus a Coulomb hole (equal to the electrostatic energy associated with the charge pushed away around a given electron). The Coulomb hole part is larger in magnitude, but the two parts give comparable contributions to the dispersion of the quasi-particle energy. The GWA can be said to describe an electronic polaron (an electron surrounded by an electronic polarization cloud), which has great similarities to the ordinary polaron (an electron surrounded by a cloud of phonons). The dynamical screening adds new crucial features beyond the HFA. With the GWA not only bandstructures but also spectral functions can be calculated, as well as charge densities, momentum distributions, and total energies. We will discuss the ideas behind the GWA, and generalizations which are necessary to improve on the rather poor GWA satellite structures in the spectral functions. We will further extend the GWA approach to fully describe spectroscopies like photoemission, x-ray absorption, and electron scattering. Finally we will comment on the relation between the GWA and theories for strongly correlated electronic systems. In collecting the material for this review, a number of new results and perspectives became apparent, which have not been published elsewhere.