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arXiv:0712.2495 · Advances in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics

On the Quantum Instability of Attractive Bose Systems

George Edwin Cragg, Arthur K. Kerman

Published Jan 1, 2010• 0 citations
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Abstract

We explore the zero-temperature behavior of an assembly of bosons interacting through a zero-range, attractive potential.Because the twobody interaction admits a bound state, the many-body model is best described by a Hamiltonian that includes the coupling between atomic and molecular components.Due to the positive scattering length, the low-density collection is expected to remain stable against collapse despite the attraction between particles.Although a variational many-body analysis indicates a collapsing solution with only a molecular component to its condensate at low density, the expected atomic condensate solution can be obtained if the chemical potential is allowed to be complex valued.In addition to revealing two discrete eigenfrequencies associated with the molecular case, an expansion in small oscillations quantifies the imaginary part of the chemical potential as proportional to a coherent decay rate of the atomic condensate into a continuum of collective phonon excitations about the collapsing lower state.

DOI
10.4310/atmp.2010.v14.n1.a2

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The occurrence of a molecular Bose-Einstein condensate is studied for an atomic system near a zero energy resonance of the binary scattering process, with a large and positive scattering length. The interaction potential is modeled by a pseudo-potential having one bound state. Using a variational Gaussian ansatz for the NNN-body density operator, we discuss the thermodynamic properties at low temperature and the relative stability of the system towards the formation of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate. We also derive an approximate Gross-Pitaevskii equation for the molecular condensate leading to the prediction of a Bogoliubov spectrum.
We calculate the energy and the condensate fraction of a system of trapped bosons interacting via a short-range two-body potential with positive scattering length. The potential is attractive and has a two-body bound state. When the scattering length is small compared to the trap length the system is model independent: all potential models —attractive, repulsive and zero-range— provide similar results. When the scattering length is large the attractive model differs qualitatively from the repulsive and zero-range models. In this regime the system with attractive potential becomes independent of the scattering length, with both the energy and the condensate fraction converging towards finite constants.
We calculate the energy and the condensate fraction of a system of trapped bosons interacting via a short-range two-body potential with positive scattering length. The potential is attractive and has a two-body bound state. When the scattering length is small compared to the trap length the system is model independent: all potential models —attractive, repulsive and zero-range— provide similar results. When the scattering length is large the attractive model differs qualitatively from the repulsive and zero-range models. In this regime the system with attractive potential becomes independent of the scattering length, with both the energy and the condensate fraction converging towards finite constants.
This work is inspired by recent experimental observations in ultracold atomic Bose-Fermi mixtures [DeSalvo et al., Nature 568 (2019)]. These experiments reveal the emergence of an attractive fermion-mediated interaction between bosons, as well as a stability-instability transition. We give the first mathematical demonstration of this transition by studying the low-energy spectrum of a many-body interspecies Hamiltonian. More precisely, we show the convergence of its eigenvalues towards those of an effective Bose Hamiltonian, which includes fermion-mediated effects. Applying this result to a model with short-range potentials, we derive a stability-instability transition in the bosonic subsystem, driven by the Bose-Fermi coupling strength ggg. For small ∣g∣|g|∣g∣, the bosons form a stable Bose-Einstein condensate with the energy per particle uniformly bounded from below. For large ∣g∣|g|∣g∣, the energy per particle is no longer uniformly bounded from below, signaling the collapse of the condensate.
We study the properties of a Bose-Einstein condensed cloud of atoms with negative scattering length confined in a harmonic trap. When a realistic non local (finite range) effective interaction is taken into account, we find that, besides the known low density metastable solution, a new branch of Bose condensate appears at higher density. This state is self-bound but its density can be quite low if the number NNN of atoms is not too big. The transition between the two classes of solutions as a function of NNN can be either sharp or smooth according to the ratio between the range of the attractive interaction and the length of the trap. A tight trap leads to a smooth transition. In addition to the energy and the shape of the cloud we study also the dynamics of the system. In particular, we study the frequencies of collective oscillation of the Bose condensate as a function of the number of atoms both in the local and in the non local case. Moreover, we consider the dynamics of the cloud when the external trap is switched off.