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arXiv:2312.04984 · AVS Quantum Science

Gas-to-soliton transition of attractive bosons on a spherical surface

Andrea Tononi, G. E. Astrakharchik, Dmitry S. Petrov

Published May 10, 2024• 12 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We investigate the ground-state properties of N bosons with attractive zero-range interactions characterized by the scattering length a > 0 and confined to the surface of a sphere of radius R. We present the analytic solution of the problem for N = 2, mean-field analysis for N→∞, and exact diffusion Monte Carlo results for intermediate N. For finite N, we observe a smooth crossover from the uniform state in the limit a/R≫1 (weak attraction) to a localized state at small a/R (strong attraction). With increasing N, this crossover narrows down to a discontinuous transition from the uniform state to a soliton of size ∼R/N. The two states are separated by an energy barrier, tunneling under which is exponentially suppressed at large N. The system behavior is marked by a peculiar competition between space-curvature effects and beyond-mean-field terms, both breaking the scaling invariance of a two-dimensional mean-field theory.

DOI
10.1116/5.0190767

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We investigate the ground-state properties of N bosons with attractive zero-range interactions characterized by the scattering length a > 0 and confined to the surface of a sphere of radius R. We present the analytic solution of the problem for N = 2, mean-field analysis for N→∞, and exact diffusion Monte Carlo results for intermediate N. For finite N, we observe a smooth crossover from the uniform state in the limit a/R≫1 (weak attraction) to a localized state at small a/R (strong attraction). With increasing N, this crossover narrows down to a discontinuous transition from the uniform state to a soliton of size ∼R/N. The two states are separated by an energy barrier, tunneling under which is exponentially suppressed at large N. The system behavior is marked by a peculiar competition between space-curvature effects and beyond-mean-field terms, both breaking the scaling invariance of a two-dimensional mean-field theory.
We develop a theory of non-relativistic bosons in two spatial dimensions with a weak short range attractive interaction. In the limit as the range of the interaction becomes small, there is an ultra-violet divergence in the problem. We devise a scheme to remove this divergence and produce a completely finite formulation of the theory. This involves reformulating the dynamics in terms of a new operator whose eigenvalues give the {\it logarithm} of the energy levels. Then, a mean field theory is developed which allows us to describe the limit of a large number of bosons. The ground state is a new kind of condensate (soliton) of bosons that breaks translation invariance spontaneously. The ground state energy is negative and its magnitude grows {\it exponentially} with the number of particles, rather than like a power law as for conventional many body systems.
By using the Bogoliubov perturbation theory we describe the self-bound ground state and excited breathing states of N N two-dimensional bosons with zero-range attractive interactions. Our results for the ground state energy B_N B N and size R_N R N improve previously known large- N N asymptotes and we better understand the crossover to the few-body regime. The breathing oscillations, absent at the mean-field level, result from the quantum-mechanical breaking of the mean-field scale symmetry. The breathing-mode frequency scales as \Omega\propto |B_N|/\sqrt{N} Ω ∝ | B N | / N at large N N .
We analyze the scattering problem of identical bosonic particles confined on a spherical surface. At low scattering energies and for a radius much larger than the healing length, we express the contact interaction strength in terms of the sss-wave scattering length. Adopting this relation, we are then able to regularize the zero-point energy of the spherical Bose gas and to obtain its equation of state, which includes the corrections due to the finite radius of the sphere and coincides with the flat-case result in the infinite-radius limit. We also provide a microscopic derivation of the superfluid density of the system, reproducing a result postulated in a previous work. Our results are relevant for modeling the ongoing microgravity experiments with two-dimensional bubble-trapped Bose-Einstein condensates.
We study a dilute gas of attractive bosons confined in a harmonic cylinder, i.e., under cylindric confinement due to a transverse harmonic potential. We introduce a many-body wavefunction which extends the Bethe ansatz proposed by McGuire (1964 J. Math. Phys. 5 622) by including a variational transverse Gaussian shape. We investigate the ground-state properties of the system comparing them with those of the one-dimensional (1D) attractive Bose gas. We find that the gas becomes ultra 1D as a consequence of the attractive interaction: the transverse width of the Bose gas reduces by increasing the number of particles up to a critical width below which there is the collapse of the cloud. In addition, we derive a simple analytical expression for the symmetry-breaking solitonic density profile of the ground state, which generalizes the one deduced by Calogero and Degasperis (Calogero F and Degasperis A 1975 Phys. Rev. A 11 265). This bright-soliton analytical solution shows near the collapse small deviations with respect to the three-dimensional (3D) mean-field numerical solution. Finally, we show that our variational Gauss–McGuire theory is always more accurate than the McGuire theory. In addition, we prove that, for small numbers of particles, the Gauss–McGuire theory is more reliable than the mean-field theory described by the 3D Gross–Pitaevskii equation.
We investigate the ground-state properties of a two-component attractive Fermi gas confined to a spherical surface, demonstrating how curvature and finite-size effects lead to qualitatively different behavior compared to the planar limit. In the strongly attractive regime, the system forms a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of tightly bound dimers, yielding a gap and chemical potential that approach flat-space results with leading-order geometric corrections. However, as the attraction decreases, the system crosses over into a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) regime where the Cooper pair size becomes constrained by the sphere radius, producing pronounced deviations from flat-space behavior. We identify strong shell effects at magic particle numbers set by the single-particle spectrum, revealing the geometry-driven suppression of fermionic pairing at weak interactions. Our results highlight a fundamental interplay among geometry, quantum statistics, and interactions, motivating future experiments with shell-trapped ultracold fermions and inspiring geometry-controlled condensed matter devices.
We study a system of penetrable bosons embedded in a spherical surface. Under the assumption of weak interaction between the particles, the ground state of the system is, to a good approximation, a pure condensate. We employ thermodynamic arguments to investigate, within a variational ansatz for the single-particle state, the crossover between distinct finite-size ``phases'' in the parameter space spanned by the sphere radius and the chemical potential. In particular, for radii up to a few interaction ranges we examine the stability of the fluid phase with respect to a number of crystal-like arrangements having the symmetry of a regular or semiregular polyhedron. We find that, while quantum fluctuations keep the system fluid at low density, upon compression it eventually becomes inhomogeneous, i.e., particles gather together in clusters. As the radius increases, the nature of the high-density aggregate varies and we observe a sequence of transitions between different cluster phases (``solids''), whose underlying rationale is to maximize the coordination number of clusters, while ensuring at the same time the proper distance between each neighboring pair. We argue that, at least within our mean-field description, every cluster phase is supersolid.