In quantum mechanics, the Schrieffer–Wolff transformation is a unitary transformation used to determine an effective (often low-energy) Hamiltonian by decoupling weakly interacting subspaces. Using a perturbative approach, the transformation can be constructed such that the interaction between the two subspaces vanishes up to the desired order in the perturbation. The transformation also perturbatively diagonalizes the system Hamiltonian to first order in the interaction. In this, the Schrieffer–Wolff transformation is an operator version of second-order perturbation theory. The Schrieffer–Wolff transformation is often used to project out the high energy excitations of a given quantum many-body Hamiltonian in order to obtain an effective low energy model. The Schrieffer–Wolff transformation thus provides a controlled perturbative way to study the strong coupling regime of quantum-many body Hamiltonians.