It is well known that a Bose–Einstein (BE) condensate of atoms exists in a system of interacting Bose atoms at T≲Tc(i), where Tc(i) is the BE condensation temperature of an ideal gas. It is also generally accepted that BE condensation is impossible at “ultrahigh” temperatures T≫Tc(i). While the latter property has been theoretically proven for an ideal gas, no such proof exists for an interacting system, to our knowledge. In this paper, we propose an approximate mathematical proof for a finite, nonrelativistic, periodic system of N spinless interacting bosons. The key point is that, at T≫Tc(i), the main contribution to the occupation number N0=1Z∑℘e−E℘/kBT⟨Ψ℘|a^0+a^0|Ψ℘⟩, corresponding to atoms with zero momentum, originates from the states containing N elementary quasiparticles. These states do not contain the BE condensate of zero-momentum atoms, implying that an ultrahigh temperature should “blur” such a condensate.
It is well known that a Bose–Einstein (BE) condensate of atoms exists in a system of interacting Bose atoms at T≲Tc(i), where Tc(i) is the BE condensation temperature of an ideal gas. It is also generally accepted that BE condensation is impossible at “ultrahigh” temperatures T≫Tc(i). While the latter property has been theoretically proven for an ideal gas, no such proof exists for an interacting system, to our knowledge. In this paper, we propose an approximate mathematical proof for a finite, nonrelativistic, periodic system of N spinless interacting bosons. The key point is that, at T≫Tc(i), the main contribution to the occupation number N0=1Z∑℘e−E℘/kBT⟨Ψ℘|a^0+a^0|Ψ℘⟩, corresponding to atoms with zero momentum, originates from the states containing N elementary quasiparticles. These states do not contain the BE condensate of zero-momentum atoms, implying that an ultrahigh temperature should “blur” such a condensate.
From a certain temperature on, the molecules “condense” without attractive forces; that is, they accumulate at zero velocity. The theory is pretty, but is there also some truth to it? Albert Einstein, Letter to Ehrenfest (Dec. 1924). Abraham Pais, Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein , Oxford University Press, New York (1982) Introduction For over 50 years the low-temperature liquid state of uncharged, spinless He 4 was the only system in which a Bose–Einstein (BE) condensation was considered experimentally realized. In that case, cold (<2.19K) liquid He 4 passes into an extraordinary phase of matter called a superfluid , in which the liquid's viscosity and entropy become zero. With advances in atomic cooling (to ≈ 10 –9 K) the number of Bose systems which demonstrably pass into a condensate has considerably increased. These include several isotopes of alkali gas atoms as well as fermionic atoms that pair into integerspin (boson) composites. Although an ideal Bose gas does exhibit a low-temperature critical instability, the ideal BE gas theory is not, on its own, able to describe the BE condensate wave state. In order for a theory of bosons to account for a condensate wave state, interactions between the bosons must be included. Nevertheless, considerable interesting physics is contained in the ideal Bose gas model.
We evaluate the zero temperature properties and Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of hard sphere bosons in a harmonic trap using Quantum Monte Carlo methods. The chief purpose of this work is to go beyond the dilute limit, to test the limits of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation and related mean field approximations and to explore the role of interactions in determining the zero temperature properties of the trapped Bose gas. The density is increased by adjusting both the number of trapped bosons, N , and the s-wave scattering length, a, to study systems from the highly dilute region corresponding to early experiments in trapped BEC [2, 3] up to liquid He densities and beyond. Rather than relying on the perturbative Bogoliubov approximation (which assumes a large condensate fraction) to describe the condensate, we use the one-body density matrix (OBDM) formulation of BEC so that the properties of the condensate for systems with arbitrarily large interactions may be studied. In this formulation of BEC, condensate properties are obtained by diagonalizing the OBDM and obtaining the corresponding single particle “natural orbitals” and their occupation numbers for the system. The condensate wave function and condensate fraction are then obtained from the single particle orbital(s) with macroscopic occupation (N0 >> 1). Within this framework, we calculate the effects of interactions and increased density on the ground state energy, the density profile, the momentum distribution, the condensate fraction and condensate “wave-function” and several other properties.
Quantum systems consisting of many particles are both interesting from the physics and the mathematics perspective. One aspect that makes them fascinating from the physics point of view is that they can exhibit quantum effects on macroscopic scales such as Bose-Einstein condensation. This phenomenon, first predicted 100 years ago by Bose [19] and Einstein [44], occurs when a dilute gas of bosons is cooled down to very low temperatures. Below a certain critical temperature a condensate forms, meaning that a macroscopic fraction of the particles is in the same one-particle state, and thus, quantum phenomena become relevant on length scales much larger than the individual atom. The occurrence of Bose-Einstein condensation is also related to superfluidity as suggested in [88]. Bose-Einstein condensation has been achieved experimentally independently by the groups of Cornell and Wieman [3] and Ketterle [40] earning them a Nobel prize in 2001. While Bose and Einstein analyzed theoretically the non-interacting gas, an effective theory describing weakly interacting Bose gases was proposed by Bogoliubov in 1947 with the goal of explaining the occurrence of superfluidity in liquid helium [18]. Using assumptions such as that condensation indeed occurs, his theory yields predictions for the low-energy states of the system. Seen from the mathematics perspective, describing the Bose gas is an interesting challenge due to the strong correlations between particles introduced by the interaction making this case much harder to study than the non-interacting one. In particular, a proof that Bose-Einstein condensation occurs in the thermodynamic limit for continuous systems is still out of reach. However, there has been a lot of work regarding the rigorous analysis of bosonic systems in various relevant regimes. This thesis contains three new contributions establishing rigorous results on bosonic systems in different, physically relevant settings. It is based on the articles [37, 27, 31]. The first result concerns the time-evolution of initially trapped Bose gases in the ultra-dilute Gross-Pitaevskii regime. Under some assumptions on the initial data satisfied in particular by a class of states that are expected to approximate the ground state in a trap, we derive a quasi-free approximation that is close to the true solution in L2-norm. In particular, we show that this approximate wave function is described in terms of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a one-particle state following the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation together with pair excitations with respect to this condensate. As a corollary, we establish a central limit theorem for bounded one-particle observables. The second result is a simple proof of Bose-Einstein condensation for interacting, ultra-dilute gases. More specifically, we consider scalings interpolating between the Gross-Pitaevskii regime and the thermodynamic limit. While condensation had been shown to hold in these regimes before, the advantage of the method used here is its simplicity. Lastly, the third result establishes an upper bound on the ground state energy of a dilute Bose gas in the thermodynamic limit. It captures rigorously the third order correction to the energy per unit volume for sufficiently low densities as predicted in the physics literature first by Wu and subsequently others. Full-text embargoed until: 2026-01-01
The nature of the Einstein-Bose condensation in an imperfect boson gas is discussed. It is argued that no matter how low the temperature, provided it is not zero, macroscopic second-sound waves should be weakly excited as thermal fluctuations about equilibrium. This implies that the single-particle momentum distribution must be smeared so that the state of zero momentum cannot contain a finite fraction of the particles. A microscopic mechanism which independently leads to a momentum spread is discussed. It is suggested that the actual Einstein-Bose condensation of an imperfect gas takes place in energy rather than momentum but that even in terms of this variable it becomes perfectly sharp only at zero temperature. This hypothesis is formulated analytically in terms of correlation functions of the second-quantized boson field.
An exact expression for the single-particle reduced density matrix of a translationally invariant system of bosons is obtained, as an average of a functional of the density and current operators. An approximation scheme, based on small fluctuations in density and current, is used in its lowest order, to approximate the single-particle reduced density matrix and the condensate density by a functional of the structure factor, which is a measurable quantity. This is done for the ground state and for finite temperatures. The resulting expressions for the condensate density are discussed. For the ideal gas the result is correct below the condensation temperature. For the case of an interacting liquid, Bose-Einstein condensation exists, in the ground states for two- and three-dimensional systems, and for finite temperatures it does exist only in three dimensions. The present experimental knowledge of the structure factor enables only a crude estimate of the condensed fraction which is found to be 0.1-0.2.
Bose-Einstein condensation is a unique phase transition in that it is not driven by interparticle interactions, but can theoretically occur in an ideal gas, purely as a consequence of quantum statistics. This chapter addresses the question, ‘ How is this ideal Bose gas condensation modified in the presence of interactions between the particles?’ This seemingly simple question turns out to be surprisingly difficult to answer. Here we outline the theoretical background to this question and discuss some recent measurements on ultracold atomic Bose gases that have sought to provide some answers. Introduction Unlike the vast majority of phase transitions, Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) is not driven by interparticle interactions but can theoretically occur in an ideal (noninteracting) gas, purely as a consequence of quantum statistics. However, in reality, interactions are needed for a Bose gas to remain close to thermal equilibrium. It is thus interesting to discuss if something close to ideal gas BEC can be observed in a real system and what happens in the vicinity of the BEC transition in the presence of interparticle interactions. These simple questions have not been easy to answer, either theoretically or experimentally. The theoretical foundations for studying the effect of interactions on Bose condensed systems were laid over half a century ago by Bogoliubov [1], Penrose and Onsager [2], and Belieav [3], among others. These works initially focused on zerotemperature properties and were extended to nonzero temperature in the pioneering papers of Lee, Huang, and Yang [4, 5, 6, 7]. At that time, the main experimental system was liquid He-4 in which the inter-particle interactions are strong, making connections with theory difficult. The realisation in 1995 of BEC in weakly interacting ultracold atomic gases [8, 9] thus opened up the possibility to experimentally revisit some of these long-discussed questions. This was further aided by, among other advances, the use of Feshbach resonances to tune the interaction strength in atomic gases [10, 11]. Thus, in the last twenty years the study of ultracold Bose gases has been very successful (see Chapter 3 for an insightful account of selected topics and surprising developments over this exciting period). However, the fact that, until recently, ultracold atoms were confined using harmonic potentials has hindered the study of the BEC transition itself.