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arXiv:1506.05263

De Finetti theorems, mean-field limits and Bose-Einstein condensation

Nicolas Rougerie

Published Jun 17, 2015• 39 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

These notes deal with the mean-field approximation for equilibrium states of N-body systems in classical and quantum statistical mechanics. A general strategy for the justification of effective models based on statistical independence assumptions is presented in details. The main tools are structure theorems {à} la de Finetti, describing the large N limits of admissible states for these systems. These rely on the symmetry under exchange of particles, due to their indiscernability. Emphasis is put on quantum aspects, in particular the mean-field approximation for the ground states of large bosonic systems, in relation with the Bose-Einstein condensation phenomenon. Topics covered in details include: the structure of reduced density matrices for large bosonic systems, Fock-space localization methods, derivation of effective energy functionals of Hartree or non-linear Schr{ö}dinger type, starting from the many-body Schr{ö}dinger Hamiltonian.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1506.05263

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These notes deal with the mean-field approximation for equilibrium states of N-body systems in classical and quantum statistical mechanics. A general strategy for the justification of effective models based on statistical independence assumptions is presented in details. The main tools are structure theorems {à} la de Finetti, describing the large N limits of admissible states for these systems. These rely on the symmetry under exchange of particles, due to their indiscernability. Emphasis is put on quantum aspects, in particular the mean-field approximation for the ground states of large bosonic systems, in relation with the Bose-Einstein condensation phenomenon. Topics covered in details include: the structure of reduced density matrices for large bosonic systems, Fock-space localization methods, derivation of effective energy functionals of Hartree or non-linear Schr{ö}dinger type, starting from the many-body Schr{ö}dinger Hamiltonian.
These lecture notes treat the mean-field approximation for equilibrium states of N body systems in classical and quantum statistical mechanics. A general strategy to justify effective models based on assumptions of statistical independence of the particles is in presented in detail. The main tools are a structure theorems of de Finetti that describe large N limits of states accessible to the systems in question, exploiting the indistinguishablity of particles. The focus is on quantum aspects, particularly the mean-field approximation for the ground state of a large system of bosons, in connection with Bose-Einstein condensation: structure of reduced density matrices of a large bosonic system, localization methods in Fock space, derivation of Hartree and non-linear Schrödinger effective energy functionals.
Abstract We introduce the number-conserving quantum phase space description as a versatile tool to address fundamental aspects of quantum many-body systems. Using phase space methods we prove two alternative versions of the quantum de Finetti theorem for finite-dimensional bosonic quantum systems, which states that a reduced density matrix of a many-body quantum state can be approximated by a convex combination of product states where the error is proportional to the inverse particle number. This theorem provides a formal justification for the mean-field description of many-body quantum systems, as it shows that quantum correlations can be neglected for the calculation of few-body observables when the particle number is large. Furthermore we discuss methods to derive the exact evolution equations for quantum phase space distribution functions as well as upper and lower bounds for the ground state energy. As an important example, we consider the Bose–Hubbard model and show that the mean-field dynamics is given by a classical phase space flow equivalent to the discrete Gross–Pitaevskii equation.
How and why could an interacting system of many particles be described as if all particles were independent and identically distributed? This question is at least as old as statistical mechanics itself. Its quantum version has been rejuvenated by the birth of cold atoms physics. In particular, the experimental creation of Bose–Einstein condensates leads to the following variant: why and how can a large assembly of very cold interacting bosons (quantum particles deprived of the Pauli exclusion principle) all populate the same quantum state? In this text I review the various mathematical techniques allowing to prove that the lowest energy state of a bosonic system forms, in a reasonable macroscopic limit of large particle number, a Bose–Einstein condensate. This means that indeed in the relevant limit all particles approximately behave as if independent and identically distributed, according to a law determined by minimizing a non-linear Schrödinger energy functional. This is a particular instance of the justification of the mean-field approximation in statistical mechanics, starting from the basic many-body Schrödinger Hamiltonian.
In this paper we provide a novel strategy to prove the validity of Hartree's theory for the ground state energy of bosonic quantum systems in the mean-field regime. For the well-known case of trapped Bose gases, this can be shown using the strong quantum de Finetti theorem, which gives the structure of infinite hierarchies of k-particles density matrices. Here we deal with the case where some particles are allowed to escape to infinity, leading to a lack of compactness. Our approach is based on two ingredients: (1) a weak version of the quantum de Finetti theorem, and (2) geometric techniques for many-body systems. Our strategy does not rely on any special property of the interaction between the particles. In particular, our results cover those of Benguria-Lieb and Lieb-Yau for, respectively, bosonic atoms and boson stars.
This thesis is about the derivation of effective mean field equations and their next-order corrections starting from nonrelativistic many-body quantum theory. Mean field equations provide an approximate ansatz for the description of interacting many-particle systems. In this ansatz the interaction between the particles is replaced by a self-consistent external potential leading to an effective one-body description of the many-particle system. Next-order corrections provide an approximation which goes one step further and tries to capture also subleading effects that are not resolved by the mean field ansatz. We present mathematical proofs for the validity of such effective theories for different models that are motivated, e.g., from the theory of ultracold atoms (the bosonic Hartree equation and the corresponding Bogoliubov theory) and from plasma physics (the motion of a tracer particle through a degenerate and dense electron gas). Starting from a many-body Schrödinger equation, our goal is to show that the solutions converge in a particular limit to the solutions to an effective mean field equation and its next-order corrections. After a short introduction and a summary in Chapter one, we present the main part of this work in three self-contained chapters. In Chapter two we analyze the dynamics of a large number N of nonrelativistic bosons in the weak coupling limit, i.e., for a coupling constant g_N=1/N. It is well known that in the limit of infinite particle number, the Hartree equation emerges as an effective one-particle theory of the Bose gas. This is closely related to the remarkable physical phenomenon of Bose-Einstein condensation at low temperature, namely that the majority of particles in a Bose gas occupies the same copy of a single one-particle quantum state. Our emphasis lies in the description of the few particles that fluctuate around the Bose-Einstein condensate. We show convergence of the fully interacting dynamics to an auxiliary time evolution in the norm of the N-particle space. This result allows us to prove several other assertions. Among other things, it is used to derive the Hartree equation with optimal speed of convergence 1/N for initial states that are close to ground states of interacting systems and also to prove convergence of the N-particle solution towards a time evolution obtained from the Bogoliubov Hamiltonian on Fock space. Chapter three is about the low energy properties of the weakly interacting homogeneous Bose gas. Here, we derive a novel estimate for low energy eigenfunctions stating that the probability for finding lll particles out of their total number N not in the condensate is exponentially small in the number lll. Using this bound, we then prove that the ground state wave function of the microscopic model satisfies certain quasifree type properties. The exponential decay is moreover used to provide an alternative proof for the validity of Bogoliubov's approximation for the low-lying energy eigenvalues. Bogoliubov theory states that the excitation energies of the Bose gas are given by excitations of free quasiparticles obeying an effective energy-momentum dispersion relation which is linear for small momentum. The linearity of the effective dispersion relation is an essential ingredient for the explanation of the superfluid character of the Bose gas. In Chapter four we study the time evolution of a single particle coupled through a pair potential to a dense and homogeneous ideal Fermi gas in two spatial dimensions. This type of model is well known in plasma physics where it is used to describe the energy loss of ions moving through a dense and degenerate electron gas. We analyze the model for a coupling parameter g=1 and prove closeness of the time evolution to an effective dynamics for large densities of the gas and for long time scales of the order of some power of the density. The effective dynamics is generated by the free Hamiltonian with a large but constant energy shift. To leading order, this energy shift is given by the spatially homogeneous mean field potential produced by the gas particles, whereas at next-to-leading order, one has to consider an additional correction to the mean field energy which is due to so-called recollision processes.
This thesis proves certain results concerning an important question in non-equilibrium quantum statistical mechanics which is the derivation of effective evolution equations approximating the dynamics of a system of large number of bosons initially at equilibrium (ground state at very low temperatures). The dynamics of such systems are governed by the time-dependent linear many-body Schroedinger equation from which it is typically difficult to extract useful information due to the number of particles being large. We will study quantitatively (i.e. with explicit bounds on the error) how a suitable one particle non-linear Schroedinger equation arises in the mean field limit as number of particles N → ∞ and how the appropriate corrections to the mean field will provide better approximations of the exact dynamics. In the first part of this thesis we consider the evolution of N bosons, where N is large, with two-body interactions of the form N³ᵝv(Nᵝ⋅), 0≤β≤1. The parameter β measures the strength and the range of interactions. We compare the exact evolution with an approximation which considers the evolution of a mean field coupled with an appropriate description of pair excitations, see [18,19] by Grillakis-Machedon-Margetis. We extend the results for 0 ≤ β < 1/3 in [19, 20] to the case of β < 1/2 and obtain an error bound of the form p(t)/Nᵅ, where α>0 and p(t) is a polynomial, which implies a specific rate of convergence as N → ∞. In the second part, utilizing estimates of the type discussed in the first part, we compare the exact evolution with the mean field approximation in the sense of marginals. We prove that the exact evolution is close to the approximate in trace norm for times of the order o(1)√N compared to log(o(1)N) as obtained in Chen-Lee-Schlein [6] for the Hartree evolution. Estimates of similar type are obtained for stronger interactions as well.