The Gutzwiller variational wave function is shown to correspond to a
particular disentanglement of the thermal evolution operator, and to be
physically consistent only in the temperature range U<<kT<<E_F, the Fermi
energy of the non-interacting system. The correspondence is established without
using the Gutzwiller approximation. It provides a systematic procedure for
extending the ansatz to the strong-coupling regime. This is carried out to
infinite order in a dominant class of commutators. The calculation shows that
the classical idea of suppressing double occupation is replaced at low
temperatures by a quantum RVB-like condition, which involves phases at
neighboring sites. Low-energy phenomenologies are discussed in the light of
this result.Comment: Final version as accepted in EPJ B, 10 pages, no figure