Ground-state energy of a low-density Bose gas: A second-order upper bound

Abstract

Consider $N$ bosons in a finite box $\ensuremath{\Lambda}={[0,L]}^{3}\ensuremath{\subset}{\mathbb{R}}^{3}$ interacting via a two-body non-negative soft potential $V=\ensuremath{\lambda}\stackrel{\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}}{V}$ with $\stackrel{\ifmmode \tilde{}\else \~{}\fi{}}{V}$ fixed and $\ensuremath{\lambda}>0$ small. We will take the limit $L,N\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$ by keeping the density $\ensuremath{\varrho}=N∕{L}^{3}$ fixed and small. We construct a variational state, which gives an upper bound on the ground-state energy per particle $\ensuremath{\epsilon}$, $\ensuremath{\epsilon}\ensuremath{\leqslant}4\ensuremath{\pi}\ensuremath{\varrho}a[1+(128∕15\sqrt{\ensuremath{\pi}}){(\ensuremath{\varrho}{a}^{3})}^{1∕2}{S}_{\ensuremath{\lambda}}]+O({\ensuremath{\varrho}}^{2}\ensuremath{\mid}\mathrm{ln}\phantom{\rule{0.2em}{0ex}}\ensuremath{\varrho}\ensuremath{\mid})$, as $\ensuremath{\varrho}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0$, with a constant satisfying $1\ensuremath{\leqslant}{S}_{\ensuremath{\lambda}}\ensuremath{\leqslant}1+C\ensuremath{\lambda}$. Here $a$ is the scattering length of $V$ and thus depends on $\ensuremath{\lambda}$. In comparison, the prediction by Lee and Yang [Phys. Rev. 105, 1119 (1957)] and Lee, Huang, and Yang [Phys. Rev. 106, 1135 (1957)] asserts that ${S}_{\ensuremath{\lambda}}=1$ independent of $\ensuremath{\lambda}$.