Operator square roots are ubiquitous in theoretical physics. They appear, for example, in the Holstein-Primakoff representation of spin operators and in the Klein-Gordon equation. Often the use of a perturbative expansion is the only recourse when dealing with them. In this paper, we show that under certain conditions, differential equations can be derived which can be used to find perturbatively inaccessible approximations to operator square roots. Specifically, for the number operator $\widehat{n}=a^{†}a$ we show that the square root $\sqrt{\widehat{n}}$ near $\widehat{n}=0$ can be approximated by a polynomial in $\widehat{n}$. This result is unexpected because a Taylor expansion fails. A polynomial expression in $\widehat{n}$ is possible because $\widehat{n}$ is an operator, and its constituents $a$ and $a^{†}$ have a non trivial commutator $[a,a^{†}]=1$ and do not behave as scalars. We apply our approach to the zero-mass Klein-Gordon Hamiltonian in a constant magnetic field and, as a main application, the Holstein-Primakoff representation of spin operators, where we are able to find new expressions that are polynomial in bosonic operators. We prove that these new expressions exactly reproduce spin operators. Our expressions are manifestly Hermitian, which offers an advantage over other methods, such as the Dyson-Maleev representation.

• Received 19 June 2020
• Accepted 30 October 2020

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.2.043243

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society