Exact self-energy of the many-body problem from conserving approximations

A procedure is proposed to obtain the exact self-energy in the many-body problem. This algorithm is based on the formal analysis to reach the exact theory by repeated applications of an operator F to an arbitrarily chosen input self-energy represented as a functional of the dressed Green's function. The operator F is so defined that the microscopic conservation law for particle number is satisfied. The rigorous self-energy is obtained by the solution of an eigenfunction of F. Particular attention is paid to the relation between the present procedure and the Baym-Kadanoff framework of conserving approximations. By simplifying the procedure in F with use of the generalized Ward identity, we suggest a practical method to implement this algorithm rather easily in actual systems. In order to suggest future directions to improve on this practical method, the recently developed mean-field theory for the Hubbard model in the limit of high spatial dimensions is also discussed in the context of our theory.