A simple pedagogical introduction to the effective action method of quantum field theory is given at a level suitable for beginning postgraduate students. It is shown how to obtain the effective potential at zero temperature from a regularized zero-point energy. The results are applicable to curved as well as to flat space. The generalization to finite temperatures is also given. It is shown how to obtain high temperature expansions of the thermodynamic potential for the neutral free Bose gas and the charged Bose gas in both the relativistic and nonrelativistic limits. The results are obtained for an arbitrary spatial dimension and in curved space. Results are also obtained for the self-interacting relativistic gas in three spatial dimensions. A detailed discussion of how the formalism may be applied to study Bose-Einstein condensation is given. The interpretation of Bose-Einstein condensation as symmetry breaking is discussed. Application is given to the study of charged bosons, both relativistic and nonrelativistic, in a constant magnetic field. The Meissner effect is obtained for the nonrelativistic gas in three spatial dimensions. The final application is to the study of nonrelativistic bosons in a harmonic oscillator confing potential trap. A number of analytical approaches to this are discussed.
The field theory of nonrelativistic fermions interacting via contact interactions can be used to calculate the properties of few-body systems of cold atoms confined in harmonic traps. The state-operator correspondence of nonrelativistic conformal field theory (NRCFT) shows that the energy eigenvalues (in oscillator units) of
N harmonically trapped fermions can be calculated from the scaling dimensions of
N-fermion operators in the NRCFT. They are also in one-to-one correspondence with zero energy, scale-invariant solutions to the
N-body problem in free space. We show that these two mappings of the trapped fermion problem to free space problems are related by an automorphism of the
SL(2,R) algebra of the conformal symmetry of fermions at the unitary limit. This automorphism exchanges the internal Hamiltonian of the gas with the trapping potential and hence provides a method for deriving virial theorems for trapped Fermi gases at the unitary limit. We also show that the state-operator correspondence can be applied directly in three spatial dimensions by calculating the scaling dimensions of two- and three-fermion operators and finding agreement with known exact results for energy levels of two and three trapped fermions at the unitary limit.
Correlations in asymptotic fluxes provide one of the primary experimental means of studying physical systems. In the context of relativistic QFT, the formalization of such experiments in terms of detector operators has led to significant progress. Motivated by these successes, in this paper we initiate a study of detector operators in nonrelativistic conformal field theories (NRCFTs). In NRCFTs, fluxes are distributed in both angle and velocity, making the natural detector operator the energy flux differential in velocity,
Ev(n^). We provide non-perturbative definitions of these operators in NRCFTs, and study their symmetries and algebra. We calculate one-point functions of these detector observables in a variety of few and many body states of representative NRCFTs, including free fermions, as well as fermions at unitarity. In interacting three-body states, they exhibit a remarkably rich behavior reflective of the Efimov three-body wave-function, including the formation of an enhanced "jet" structure due to the presence of resonant interactions. We use these detectors to derive a nonrelativistic generalization of the Hofman-Maldacena conformal collider bounds by arguing for positivity of
Ev(n^), and imposing this in spin 1 states. We outline a number of future directions for the study of detectors in NRCFTs, and discuss how they can be measured in a variety of experimental platforms from cold atoms to low energy neutron experiments.