This condition can be violated by increasing the density, or lowering the temperature. What then would be the value of z ? To answer this question, recall that in deriving Equation (18.1) in Section 14.12, we took the infinite-volume limit, and replaced the sum over states by an integration. This assigns zero weight to the state of zero momentum, for the volume element 4πp2dp vanishes at p = 0. In the formula (Equation [18.1]), n is therefore the density of particles with nonzero momentum, and this is the quantity bounded by Equation (18.4). When this bound is exceeded, the excess particles cannot disappear, as photons could, because their number is conserved. They are forced to go into the zero-momentum state, and this single quantum state becomes macroscopically occupied, that is, occupied by a finite fraction of the particles. This phenomenon is called Bose-Einstein condensation.
Consider a gas of bosons whose total number is conserved. The equation for the fugacity is nλ3 = g3/2(z) (11.1) and a qualitative plot of the function g3/2 is shown in Fig.11. 1. The function has infinite slope at z = 1, since z d dz g3/2(z) = g1/2(z) = ∞∑ =1 z√ (11.2) and the series diverges at z = 1. It is thus bounded by the value g3/2(1) = ∞∑ =1 −3/2 = ζ (3/2) = 2.612 . . . (11.3) solution to (11.1) nλ3 ≤ g3/2(1). (11.4) This condition can be violated by increasing the density, or lowering the temperature. What then would be the value of z?
As we all know, single microscopic particles such as electrons or atoms do not behave according to the familiar classical (Newtonian) physics which describes the everyday world, but rather according to the prescriptions of quantum mechanics, the outcome is often bizarre and counterintuitive. When a macroscopic number of such particles (say ∼ 10) is assembled under conditions where the effects of quantum mechanics are important, the results can be even more spectacular; they include macroscopic phenomena such as superfluidity and superconductivity, which are completely impossible to explain in classical terms. Most, though not all of these exotic phenomena, are a result of a phenomenon which I shall refer to generically as “quantum condensation,” in which a macroscopic number of particles or pairs of particles—a nonzero fraction of all particles present—occupy a single quantum state; this phenomenon is traditionally referred to as Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) when it occurs in a system of bosons such as liquid He, and as Cooper pairing when it occurs, for pairs of particles, in a system of fermions such as the electrons in a superconducting metal. As a result of quantum condensation, the characteristically quantum-mechanical behavior which we are used to seeing at the level of single electrons is as it were amplified by the cooperation of condensed particles and can manifest itself at the macroscopic level. The present essay is intended as a general introduction to the subject of quantum condensation and its consequences, as manifested in a variety of physical systems. I will try to review the fundamental physical ideas, usually without de-
Bose–Einstein condensation can be understood as a macroscopic occupation of a single-particle state. But an alternative definition, which requires only a macroscopic occupation of an arbitrarily small energy band of single-particle states, is also known, referred to as generalized Bose–Einstein condensation, and considered to be thermodynamically more stable. Depending on the number of macroscopically occupied single-particle states in the condensate, three types are then distin-guished. If the number of macroscopically occupied single-particle states is finite but at least one, then the condensation is said to be of type-I. A type-II condensate occurs if infinitely many single-particle states are macroscopically occupied. If a generalized Bose–Einstein condensation without any macroscopically occupied single-particle states is present, then one speaks of a type-III con-densation. In noninteracting Bose gases, it is generally easier to prove the occurrence of generalized Bose–Einstein condensation than to determine its type. While a main step for the former task is to show that the critical density is finite, quite detailed knowledge of the energy gaps of the cor-responding single-particle Hamiltonian at the lower edge of the spectrum is needed for the latter one. In this dissertation, we study the occurrence of a Bose–Einstein condensate in Bose gases that are placed in metrically transitive random potentials. We mainly consider the Poisson random potential. The thermodynamic limit and Dirichlet boundary conditions are used throughout this work. We explore noninteracting Bose gases in arbitrary dimension at positive temperatures and a one-dimensional interacting Bose gas at zero temperature. We provide fairly general sufficient conditions for the random potential that imply the almost sure occurrence of generalized Bose–Einstein condensation in noninteracting Bose gases. These conditions are fulfilled by a Poisson random potential, depending on its single-impurity potential. They are also met by the one-dimensional Luttinger–Sy model, which is a central system in the research area of Bose gases in random potentials, and a generalization thereof. Moreover, we state sufficient energy gap conditions such that one can conclude a type-I condensation in Poisson random potentials. We consider different probabilistic notions here, such as convergence in the rth mean, r P N, in probability, and with probability almost one. In particular, we prove that in the Luttinger–Sy model with infinitely strong random potential a type-I condensation occurs in the rth mean, r P N, if the particle density is greater than the critical one. For the Luttinger–Sy model with a finitely strong random potential, we show the same statement, but with probability almost one. Finally, we discuss the Luttinger–Sy model with a repulsive contact interaction between the particles at zero temperature. We provide sufficient requirements such that a generalized Bose–Einstein condensate almost surely occurs. We also show that the type of the condensate is altered by the interparticle interaction. In particular, we demonstrate a transition from a type-I to a type-III condensate when the strength of the contact interaction is increased. Furthermore, we prove that the interparticle interaction reduces the local particle density.
Using techniques developed by Greenspoon and Pathria, a rigorous, asymptotic analysis of the onset of Bose-Einstein condensation in a finite two-dimensional system at constant pressure is carried out. Some of the results obtained by Imry, Bergman, and Gunther, who first considered this problem, are upheld while others get modified. In particular, a macroscopic occupation of the single-particle ground state at finite temperatures is indeed possible. As the critical region, $T\ensuremath{\simeq}{T}_{c}$, is approached from above, the volume of the system becomes subextensive,
Vc=O(lnNN), which is both necessary and sufficient for the onset of Bose-Einstein condensation in the system. For instance, if the system is now cooled even at constant volume
V(=Vc), the condensate fraction gradually builds up and becomes nonnegligible as
T approaches ${T}_{0}\ensuremath{\simeq}\frac{({T}_{c})}{2}$; below
T0, it grows steadily as $(1\ensuremath{-}\frac{T}{{T}_{0}})$. On the other hand, if we continued to cool the system at constant
P its volume, over a thermodynamically negligible range of temperatures, would reduce to values
O(N21) which, in turn, would be accompanied by an abrupt accumulation of practically all the particles of the system into the single-particle ground state ${\ensuremath{\epsilon}}_{0}$. The specific heat
CP, after having passed through a maximum, would also finally reduce to subextensive values. Phase transitions of this kind may be of relevance to the physical behavior of thin helium films and helium submonolayers.
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