Dynamics of interacting Brownian particles: A diagrammatic formulation

We present a diagrammatic formulation of a theory for the time dependence of density fluctuations in equilibrium systems of interacting Brownian particles. To facilitate derivation of the diagrammatic expansion, we introduce a basis that consists of orthogonalized many-particle density fluctuations. We obtain an exact hierarchy of equations of motion for time-dependent correlations of orthogonalized density fluctuations. To simplify this hierarchy we neglect contributions to the vertices from higher-order cluster expansion terms. An iterative solution of the resulting equations can be represented by diagrams with three- and four-leg vertices. We analyze the structure of the diagrammatic series for the time-dependent density correlation function and obtain a diagrammatic interpretation of reducible and irreducible memory functions. The one-loop self-consistent approximation for the latter function coincides with mode-coupling approximation for Brownian systems that was derived previously using a projection operator approach. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics.