Ring polymer self-consistent field theory is used to calculate the critical temperatures and heat capacities of an ideal Bose gas for an order of magnitude more particles than previously reported. A lambda-transition indicative of Bose-Einstein condensation is observed as expected. Using a known proof of spatial mode entanglement in Bose-Einstein condensates, a relationship between boson exchange and quantum entanglement is established. This is done without the use of state vectors, since ring polymer quantum theory uses instead a thermal degree of freedom, sometimes called the "imaginary time", to map classical statistical mechanics onto non-relativistic quantum mechanics through the theorems of density functional theory. It is shown that quantum phenomena, such as Bose-Einstein condensation, boson exchange, entanglement and contextuality, can be visualized in terms of merging and separating ring polymer threads in thermal-space. A possible extension to fermions is mentioned.
Ring polymer self-consistent field theory is used to calculate the critical temperatures and heat capacities of an ideal Bose gas for an order of magnitude more particles than previously reported. A lambda-transition indicative of Bose-Einstein condensation is observed as expected. Using a known proof of spatial mode entanglement in Bose-Einstein condensates, a relationship between boson exchange and quantum entanglement is established. This is done without the use of state vectors, since ring polymer quantum theory uses instead a thermal degree of freedom, sometimes called the "imaginary time", to map classical statistical mechanics onto non-relativistic quantum mechanics through the theorems of density functional theory. It is shown that quantum phenomena, such as Bose-Einstein condensation, boson exchange, entanglement and contextuality, can be visualized in terms of merging and separating ring polymer threads in thermal-space. A possible extension to fermions is mentioned.
We present an approach for the analysis of Bose-Einstein condensates in a few mode approximation. This method has already been used to successfully analyze the vibrational modes in various molecular systems and offers a perspective on the dynamics in many particle bosonic systems. We discuss a system consisting of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a triple well potential. Such systems correspond to classical Hamiltonian systems with three degrees of freedom. The semiclassical approach allows a simple visualization of the eigenstates of the quantum system referring to the underlying classical dynamics. From this classification we can read off the dynamical properties of the eigenstates such as particle exchange between the wells and entanglement without further calculations. In addition, this approach offers insights into the validity of the mean-field description of the many particle system by the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, since we make use of exactly this correspondence in our semiclassical analysis. We choose a three mode system in order to visualize it easily and, moreover, to have a sufficiently interesting structure, although the method can also be extended to higher dimensional systems.
The predictions of quantum mechanics often differ from our everyday experiences. In the classical case, the state of a system can be predicted precisely, assuming the exact knowledge of all parameters. This is not possible in quantum mechanics. For example, the spin of one particle can be simultaneously in two different states, until a measurement defines the actual state. If multiple particles are in such superposition states, their spins can be coupled with each other such that the measurement of one particle changes the physical state of the other particles. This coupling effect is a fundamental part of quantum mechanics and is called entanglement. It is a central requirement for applications in the fields of quantum communication, quantum cryptography and quantum computing. One possibility to create entanglement are spin-changing collisions in a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate. These collisions are described by a nonlinear process, which creates non-classical correlations between all atoms of the Bose-Einstein condensate. Within this thesis, 87Rb spinor Bose-Einstein condensates are used to demonstrate Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen entanglement by the generation and analysis of a two-mode entangled state in spin space [A1]. These states are applied in an interferometric measurement with a resolution of 2.05+0.34 -0.37 dB beyond the standard quantum limit [A2]. Depending on the dynamics, the process can also be analogous to the dynamical Casimir effect [A3]. The entanglement between the particles in these publications is strongly connected with their indistinguishability. It is thus possible to make the particles distinguishable again and recover the entanglement between the now separated particles? This question is approached by cutting an entangled state of indistinguishable particles into two spatially separated atomic modes - creating a two-mode entangled state in real space. As shown in Ref. [A4], the entanglement between the two separated clouds of a Bose-Einstein condensate can be measured directly. In the future, the created state can be employed for a test of quantum nonlocality.
We present a method for approximating real-time correlation functions and quantum transport coefficients of bosonic condensed phases. The direct evaluation of quantum real-time correlation functions in the path integral formulation is impossible due to a severe dynamical sign problem. Evaluating imaginary-time correlation functions and inverting them using analytic continuation is famously ill-posed. Ring polymer molecular dynamics (RPMD) provides an alternative approach resulting in accurate approximations for real-time correlation functions of condensed phases but neglects exchange effects. In this work, we develop a bosonic RPMD method, which is exact in the harmonic, short time, and high temperature limits. A critical enabling observation is that the Kubo-transformed correlation function for bosons is real only when the correlated observables are symmetric under exchange. We benchmark the method on harmonic and anharmonic model systems and then use it to directly obtain the Lieb-Liniger gas density-density real-time correlation functions at various temperatures and momentum transfers. This work enables the direct simulation of finite-temperature, real-time dynamics of large bosonic condensed phases using RPMD for the first time.
Bose-Einstein condensation and the λ-transition are described in molecular detail for bosons interacting with a pair potential. New phenomena are identified that are absent in the usual ideal gas treatment. Monte Carlo simulations of Lennard-Jones helium-4 neglecting ground momentum state bosons give a diverging heat capacity approaching the transition. Pure permutation loops give continuous growth in the occupancy of the ground momentum state. Mixed ground and excited momentum state permutation loops give a discontinuous transition to the condensed phase. The consequent latent heat for the λ-transition is 3\% of the total energy. The predicted critical velocity for superfluid flow is within a factor of three of the measured values over three orders of magnitude in pore diameter.
In this work, we analyze the corrections obtained on a homogeneous one-dimensional Bose gas within the high densities limit by means of the non-regular representation of quantum mechanics introduced by the polymer quantization scheme. Thus, starting from the Bogoliubov formalism, we analyze the ground expectation value of the polymer momentum operator in terms of semiclassical states in order to obtain an analytic expression for the ground state energy of the N-body system, which allows us to solve the pathological behavior commonly associated with the one-dimensional Bose–Einstein condensation through the introduction of finite size effects characterized by the contribution of the polymer corrections. We also discuss the speed of sound in our polymer version of the Bose gas and the corresponding relative shift induced by the introduction of a minimum length parameter. Finally, we investigate the emergent superfluid behavior in our polymer model by implementing an appropriate Landau’s criterion. In this case, we are able to consequently analyze the changes in the critical velocity which defines the limit between the superfluid-condensate regions, thus deducing that the polymer length acts as a kind of pseudo-potential which induces a dissipationless flow associated with the superfluid phase even in the absence of self-interactions.
We review recent experiments on the Bose-Einstein condensation of photons in a dye-filled optical microresonator. The most well-known example of a photon gas, photons in blackbody radiation, does not show Bose-Einstein condensation. Instead of massively populating the cavity ground mode, photons vanish in the cavity walls when they are cooled down. The situation is different in an ultrashort optical cavity imprinting a low-frequency cutoff on the photon energy spectrum that is well above the thermal energy. The latter allows for a thermalization process in which both temperature and photon number can be tuned independently of each other or, correspondingly, for a nonvanishing photon chemical potential. We here describe experiments demonstrating the fluorescence-induced thermalization and Bose-Einstein condensation of a two-dimensional photon gas in the dye microcavity. Moreover, recent measurements on the photon statistics of the condensate, showing Bose-Einstein condensation in the grand-canonical ensemble limit, will be reviewed. Introduction Quantum statistical effects become relevant when a gas of particles is cooled, or its density is increased, to the point where the associated de Broglie wavepackets spatially overlap. For particles with integer spin (bosons), the phenomenon of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) then leads to macroscopic occupation of a single quantum state at finite temperatures [1]. Bose-Einstein condensation in the gaseous case was first achieved in 1995 by laser and subsequent evaporative cooling of a dilute cloud of alkali atoms [2, 3, 4], as detailed in Chapter 3 of this volume. The condensate atoms can be described by a macroscopic singleparticle wavefunction, similar to the case of liquid helium [1]. Bose-Einstein condensation has also been observed for exciton-polaritons, which are hybrid states of matter and light [5, 6, 7] (see Chapter 4), magnons [8] (see Chapter 25), and other physical systems. Other than material particles, photons usually do not show Bose-Einstein condensation [9]. In blackbody radiation, the most common Bose gas, photons at low temperature disappear, instead of condensing to a macroscopically occupied ground-state mode. In this system, photons have a vanishing chemical potential, meaning that the number of photons is determined by the available thermal energy and cannot be tuned independently from temperature.