On the Cauchy problem for the Hartree approximation in quantum dynamics

Abstract

We prove existence and uniqueness results for the time-dependent Hartree approximation arising in quantum dynamics. The Hartree equations of motion form a coupled system of nonlinear Schrödinger equations for the evolution of product state approximations. They are a prominent example for dimension reduction in the context of the the time-dependent Dirac-Frenkel variational principle. We handle the case of Coulomb potentials thanks to Strichartz estimates. Our main result addresses a general setting where the nonlinear coupling cannot be considered as a perturbation. The proof uses a recursive construction that is inspired by the standard approach for the Cauchy problem associated to symmetric quasilinear hyperbolic equations.