Contact interactions can be used to describe a system of particles at unitarity, contribute to the leading part of nuclear interactions and are numerically non-trivial because they require a proper regularization and renormalization scheme. We explain how to tune the coefficient of a contact interaction between non-relativistic particles on a discretized space in 1, 2, and 3 spatial dimensions such that we can remove all discretization artifacts. By taking advantage of a latticized Lüscher zeta function, we can achieve a momentum-independent scattering amplitude at any finite lattice spacing.
Contact interactions can be used to describe a system of particles at unitarity, contribute to the leading part of nuclear interactions and are numerically non-trivial because they require a proper regularization and renormalization scheme. We explain how to tune the coefficient of a contact interaction between non-relativistic particles on a discretized space in 1, 2, and 3 spatial dimensions such that we can remove all discretization artifacts. By taking advantage of a latticized Lüscher zeta function, we can achieve a momentum-independent scattering amplitude at any finite lattice spacing.
Abstract The configuration interaction (CI) method for calculating the exact eigenstates of a quantum-mechanical few-body system is problematic when applied to particles interacting through contact forces. In dimensions higher than one the approach fails due to the pathology of the Dirac δ -potential, making it impossible to reach convergence by gradually increasing the size of the Hilbert space. However, this problem may be cured in a rather simple manner by renormalizing the strength of the contact potential when diagonalizing in a truncated Hilbert space. One hereby relies on the comparison of the CI results to the two-body ground-state energy obtained by the exact solution of the Schrödinger equation for a regularized contact interaction. We discuss here a scheme that provides cutoff-independent few-body physical observables. The method is applied to a few-body system of ultracold atoms confined by a two-dimensional harmonic oscillator.
We renormalize the two-body contact interaction based on the exact solution of two interacting particles in a harmonic trap. This renormalization extends the validity of the contact interaction to large scattering lengths. We apply this renormalized interaction to a degenerate unitary Bose gas to study its stationary properties and elementary excitations using the mean-field theory and the hyperspherical method. Since the scattering length is no longer a relevant length scale at unitarity, universal properties are obtained that depend only on the average particle density. Our treatment shows that the universal relations for the total energy and for the two-body contact are $E/N=12.67{\ensuremath{\hbar}}^{2}\ensuremath{\langle}{n}^{2/3}\ensuremath{\rangle}/2m$ and ${C}_{2}/N=11.8\ensuremath{\langle}{n}^{1/3}\ensuremath{\rangle}$, respectively.
In the first part of the thesis we consider the constraints of causality and unitarity for particles interacting via strictly finite-range interactions. We generalize Wigner's causality bound to the case of non-vanishing partial-wave mixing. Specifically we analyze the system of the low-energy interactions between protons and neutrons. We also analyze low-energy scattering for systems with arbitrary short-range interactions plus an attractive 1/rα tail for α≥2. In particular, we focus on the case of α=6 and we derive the constraints of causality and unitarity also for these systems and find that the van der Waals length scale dominates over parameters characterizing the short-distance physics of the interaction. This separation of scales suggests a separate universality class for physics characterizing interactions with an attractive 1/r6 tail. We argue that a similar universality class exists for any attractive potential 1/rα for α≥2. In the second part of the thesis we present lattice Monte Carlo calculations of fermion-dimer scattering in the limit of zero-range interactions using the adiabatic projection method. The adiabatic projection method uses a set of initial cluster states and Euclidean time projection to give a systematically improvable description of the low-lying scattering cluster states in a finite volume. We use Lüscher's finite-volume relations to determine the s-wave, p-wave, and d-wave phase shifts. For comparison, we also compute exact lattice results using Lanczos iteration and continuum results using the Skorniakov-Ter-Martirosian equation. For our Monte Carlo calculations we use a new lattice algorithm called impurity lattice Monte Carlo. This algorithm can be viewed as a hybrid technique which incorporates elements of both worldline and auxiliary-field Monte Carlo simulations.
We investigate the single-particle momentum distribution, the two-body contact and three-body tail coefficients of mass-imbalanced three-body systems at the critical dimension Dc, where the transition between discrete and continuous scale invariance takes place as the spatial dimension is tuned between three and two dimensions. We show that the asymptotic momentum distribution at Dc is governed by a distinct logarithmic scaling structure, which differs fundamentally from both the log-periodic behavior of Efimov states and the power-law scaling of the unatomic regime. This structure contains an additional quadratic-logarithmic contribution, characterized by the asymptotic coefficient C3′′, which leads to a finite and well-defined description of the momentum tail at the transition. The coefficient C3′′ depends sensitively on the mass imbalance, changing sign across different mass configurations and vanishing for identical particles. For heavy-light-light configurations, the subleading three-body term vanishes at a characteristic momentum, leaving the leading two-body contribution at the order retained in the asymptotic expansion. The physical accessibility of this cancellation depends on the separation between the trimer size and the interaction range. We further analyze the narrow intermediate region connecting the Efimov and unatomic regimes, here identified as an intermediate scaling regime, whose extent and properties are strongly controlled by the mass ratio. These results establish the critical dimension as a regime with emergent scaling properties and provide quantitative momentum-space signatures for probing the transition between discrete and continuous scale invariance in few-body quantum systems.
Lattice field theory methods, usually associated with non-perturbative studies of quantum chromodynamics, are becoming increasingly common in the calculation of ground-state and thermal properties of strongly interacting non-relativistic few- and many-body systems, blurring the interfaces between condensed matter, atomic and low-energy nuclear physics. While some of these techniques have been in use in the area of condensed matter physics for a long time, others, such as hybrid Monte Carlo and improved effective actions, have only recently found their way across areas. With this topical review, we aim to provide a modest overview and a status update on a few notable recent developments. For the sake of brevity we focus on zero-temperature, non-relativistic problems. After a short introduction, we lay out some general considerations and proceed to discuss sampling algorithms, observables, and systematic effects. We show selected results on ground- and excited-state properties of fermions in the limit of unitarity. The appendix contains details on group theory on the lattice.
Lattice field theory methods, usually associated with non-perturbative studies of quantum chromodynamics, are becoming increasingly common in the calculation of ground-state and thermal properties of strongly interacting non-relativistic few- and many-body systems, blurring the interfaces between condensed matter, atomic and low-energy nuclear physics. While some of these techniques have been in use in the area of condensed matter physics for a long time, others, such as hybrid Monte Carlo and improved effective actions, have only recently found their way across areas. With this topical review, we aim to provide a modest overview and a status update on a few notable recent developments. For the sake of brevity we focus on zero-temperature, non-relativistic problems. After a short introduction, we lay out some general considerations and proceed to discuss sampling algorithms, observables, and systematic effects. We show selected results on ground- and excited-state properties of fermions in the limit of unitarity. The appendix contains details on group theory on the lattice.