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arXiv:2503.15811 · SciPost Physics

Reduced density matrix approach to one-dimensional ultracold bosonic systems

Mitchell J. Knight, Harry M. Quiney, Andy M. Martin

Published Sep 28, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

The variational determination of the two-boson reduced density matrix is described for a one-dimensional system of N N harmonically trapped bosons interacting via contact interaction, where N N ranges from 2 2 to 10^4 10 4 . The ground-state energies are calculated, and compared to existing methods, including the analytic case (for N=2) N = 2 ) and mean-field approaches such as the one-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii equation and its variations. Structural properties such as the density and correlation functions are also derived, including the behaviour of the correlation function when boson coordinates coincide. This collectively demonstrates the capacity of the reduced density matrix method to accurately calculate collective ground-state properties of bosonic systems comprising few to many bosons, including the cross-over region between these extremes, across a large range of interaction strengths.

DOI
10.21468/scipostphys.21.3.077

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The variational determination of the two-boson reduced density matrix is described for a one-dimensional system of N N harmonically trapped bosons interacting via contact interaction, where N N ranges from 2 2 to 10^4 10 4 . The ground-state energies are calculated, and compared to existing methods, including the analytic case (for N=2) N = 2 ) and mean-field approaches such as the one-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii equation and its variations. Structural properties such as the density and correlation functions are also derived, including the behaviour of the correlation function when boson coordinates coincide. This collectively demonstrates the capacity of the reduced density matrix method to accurately calculate collective ground-state properties of bosonic systems comprising few to many bosons, including the cross-over region between these extremes, across a large range of interaction strengths.
Abstract The variational determination of the two-fermion reduced density matrix (2-RDM) is described for harmonically trapped, ultracold few-fermion systems in one dimension with equal spin populations. This is accomplished by formulating the problem as a semi-definite program, with the 2-RDM being subject to well-knownN-representability conditions. The ground-state energies, as well as the density, pair-correlation function, and lower-order eigenvalues of the 2-RDM of various fermionic systems are found by utilising an augmented Lagrangian method for semi-definite programming. The ground-state energies are found to match well to those determined by full-configuration interaction and coupled-cluster calculations and the density, pair-correlation function, and eigenvalue results demonstrate that the salient features of these systems are well-described by this method. These results collectively demonstrate the utility of the reduced density matrix method firstly in describing strong correlation arising from short-range interactions, suggesting that the well-knownN-representability conditions are sufficient to model ultracold fermionic systems, and secondly in illustrating the prospect of treating larger systems currently out of the reach of established methods.
We present a simple renormalization-group method of investigating ground-state properties of interacting bosonic systems. Our method reduces the number of particles in a system, which makes numerical calculations possible for large systems. It is conceptually simple and easy to implement, and allows investigation of properties unavailable through mean-field approximations, such as one- and two-particle reduced density matrices of the ground state. As an example, we model a weakly interacting one-dimensional Bose gas in a harmonic trap. Compared to the mean-field Gross-Pitaevskii approximation, our method provides a more accurate description of the ground-state one-particle density matrix. We have also obtained the Hall-Post lower bounds for the ground-state energy of the gas. All results have been obtained by straightforward numerical diagonalization of the Hamiltonian matrix.
In this thesis, we study the physical properties of several ultracold few-boson systems depending on the interactions between their constituents. Nowadays, experimentally, it is possible to have great control with high precision over the geometry and the interactions between the particles, making them an excellent setup to test directly the principles of quantum mechanics. A very interesting point is to study the evolution of their properties with the number of particles. The theoretical study of these systems pretends to microscopically understand the current experimental results and give support to new experimental developments.\n\n\t\t\t\t The method that will be used is the exact diagonalization of the Hamiltonian of the system. As we will see, in spite of the attempts to improve it, the method is limited by the fact that, in practice, it is only useful to study few-particle systems. The method has several advantages. First of all, one has access to both the ground and the excited states. In second place, the method is variational and converges to the exact solution as long as the Hilbert space in which we diagonalize is enlarged.\n\t\t\t\t Moreover, since we have access to the states of the system, it is possible to calculate any observable quantity of interest.\n\n\t\t\t\t First, we will study a system of spinless bosons trapped in a two-dimensional harmonic potential. The effect of the trap is to keep the system bound. It will be seen how the presence of a repulsive interaction changes the energy spectrum and other properties of the system. For instance, the density profile, which is usually measurable, and also the two-body distribution function, which is intimately related to the existence of correlations.\n\n\t\t\t\t Afterwards, the focus will be on the particular case of having only two bosons in the system interacting through a strong repulsive force. Inspired by the one-dimensional case where the fermionization phenomenon takes place in the strongly-interacting limit, we will study whether in two dimensions there is a resembling reminiscent effect. In other words, we will analyze if there are properties of the two strongly-interacting bosons in two dimensions that are like the ones of two noninteracting fermions.\n\n\t\t\t\t After that, we will tackle the localization phenomenon in a one-dimensional system that is caused by an external speckle potential that introduces disorder in the system. We will show that the localization is a robust phenomenon against repulsive contact interactions.\n\n\t\t\t\t Finally, we will study the influence of the spin-orbit coupling in a system of bosons with two possible pseudospin components, associated, for instance, to two hyperfine levels, confined in a two-dimensional harmonic trap. We will present an exhaustive analysis of the combined effects of the interaction and the spin-orbit coupling in the spectrum and the properties of the system. In particular we show the existence of a crossover in the ground state of the system susceptible to be experimentally identified.
We consider systems of a small number of interacting bosons confined to harmonic potentials in one and two dimensions. By exact numerical diagonalization of the many-body Hamiltonian we determine the low-lying excitation energies and the ground-state energy and density profile. We discuss the dependence of these quantities on both interaction strength ggg and particle number NNN. The ground-state properties are compared to the predictions of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, and the agreement is surprisingly good even for relatively low particle numbers. We also calculate the specific heat based on the obtained energy spectra.
Abstract A mixture of two kinds of identical bosons, species 1 with N 1 bosons of mass m 1 and species 2 with N 2 bosons of mass m 2 , held in a harmonic potential of frequency ω and interacting by harmonic intra-species and inter-species particle-particle interactions of strengths λ 1 , λ 2 , and λ 12 is discussed. This is an exactly-solvable model of a generic mixture of trapped interacting bosons which allows one to investigate and determine analytically properties of interest. To start, closed form expressions for the frequencies, ground-state energy, and wave-function of the mixture are obtained and briefly analyzed as a function of the masses, numbers of particles, and strengths and signs of interactions. To prove Bose–Einstein condensation of the mixture three steps are needed. First, we integrate the all-particle density matrix, employing a four-parameter matrix-recurrence relations, down to the lowest-order intra-species and inter-species reduced density matrices of the mixture. Second, the coupled Gross–Pitaevskii (mean-field) equations of the mixture are solved analytically. Third, we analyze the mixture’s reduced density matrices in the limit of an infinite number of particles of both species 1 and 2 (when the interaction parameters, i.e. the products of the number of particles times the intra-species and inter-species interaction strengths, are held fixed) and prove that: (i) both species 1 and 2 are 100% condensed; (ii) the inter-species reduced density matrix per particle is separable and given by the product of the intra-species reduced density matrices per particle; and (iii) the mixture’s energy per particle, and reduced density matrices and densities per particle all coincide with the Gross–Pitaevskii quantities. Finally, when the infinite-particle limit is taken with respect to, say, species 1 only (with interaction parameters held fixed) we prove that: (iv) only species 1 is 100% condensed and its reduced density matrix and density per particle, as well as the mixture’s energy per particle, coincide with the Gross–Pitaevskii quantities of species 1 alone; and (v) the inter-species reduced density matrix per particle is nonetheless separable and given by the product of the intra-species reduced density matrices per particle. The results are compared and discussed with respect to the recent work by Bouvrie et al (2014 Eur. Phys. J . D 68 346 ) who found for attractive mixtures vanishing bipartite entanglement between the two species and between a single particle (of either kind) and the remaining particles in the mixture. Implications are briefly discussed.
Variational reduced-density-matrix theory is applied to calculating the ground-state energy and two-electron reduced density matrices (2-RDMs) of the one-dimensional Hubbard model for a range of interaction strengths. The 2-RDM is constrained to represent an NNN-particle wave function by two sets of NNN-representability conditions, known as the 2- and partial 3-positivity conditions. Variational optimization of the energy with the 2-RDM constrained by NNN-representability conditions is performed using a first-order semidefinite-programming algorithm that was developed for treating atoms and molecules [D. A. Mazziotti, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 213001 (2004)]. Accurate energies for a broad range of interaction strengths indicate that the variational 2-RDM method is a valuable tool for studying strongly correlated electrons.