© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

Terms Privacy Legal Notice

New Journal of Physics

The relation between the Gross–Pitaevskii and Bogoliubov descriptions of a dilute Bose gas

A. J. Leggett

Published Jul 31, 2003• 29 citations

Abstract

I formulate a 'pseudo-paradox' in the theory of a dilute Bose gas with repulsive interactions: the standard expression for the ground state energy within the Gross–Pitaevskii (GP) approximation is lower than that in the Bogoliubov approximation, and hence, by the standard variational argument, the former should prima facie be a better approximation than the latter to the true ground state—a conclusion which is of course opposite to the established wisdom concerning this problem. It is shown that the pseudo-paradox is (unsurprisingly) resolved by a correct transcription of the two-body scattering theory to the many-body case; however, contrary to what appears to be a widespread belief, the resolution has nothing to do with any spurious ultraviolet divergences which result from the replacement of the true interatomic potential by a delta-function pseudopotential. Rather, it relates to an infrared divergence which has the consequence that (a) the most obvious form of the GP 'approximation' actually does not correspond to any well-defined ansatz for the many-body wavefunction, and (b) that the 'best shot' at such a wavefunction always produces an energy which exceeds, or at best equals, that calculated in the Bogoliubov approximation. In fact, the necessity of the latter may be seen as a consequence of the need to reduce the Fock term in the energy, which is absent in the two-particle problem but dominant in the many-body case; it does this by increasing the density correlations, at distances less than or approximately equal to the correlation length , above the value extrapolated from the two-body case. As a by-product I devise an alternative formulation of the Bogoliubov approximation which does not require the explicit replacement of the true interatomic potential by a delta-function pseudopotential.

DOI: 10.1088/1367-2630/5/1/103

Related papers

Ground-state energy and depletions for a dilute binary Bose gas

André Eckardt, Christoph Weiß, Martin Holthaus

When calculating the ground-state energy of a weakly interacting Bose gas with the help of the customary contact pseudopotential, one meets an artifical ultraviolet divergence which is caused by the incorrect treatment of the true interparticle interactions at small distances. We argue that this problem can be avoided by retaining the actual, momentum-dependent interaction matrix elements, and use this insight for computing both the ground-state energy and the depletions of a binary Bose gas mixture. Even when considering the experimentally relevant case of equal masses of both species, the resulting expressions are quite involved, and they are no straightforward generalizations of the known single-species formulas. On the other hand, we demonstrate in detail how these latter formulas are recovered from our two-species results in the limit of vanishing interspecies interaction.

arXiv:cond-mat/0408533•Physical Review A•Oct 15, 2004•15 citations

Dilute Bose gas in two dimensions: Density expansions and the Gross-Pitaevskii equation

Alexander Yu. Cherny, Arkady A Shanenko

A dilute homogeneous two-dimensional (2D) Bose gas at zero temperature is studied with the method developed earlier by the authors. This method allows for considering renormalization of an arbitrary pairwise potential in a self-consistent manner, without the pseudopotential delta-function representation. Low-density expansions are derived for the chemical potential, ground-state energy, pair distribution function, kinetic and interaction energies. The expansion parameter is found to be a dimensionless in-medium scattering amplitude u obeying the equation 1/u+ln u=-ln(na(2)pi)-2gamma, where na(2) and gamma are the gas parameter and the Euler constant, respectively. It is shown that the ground-state energy is mostly kinetic in the low-density limit. This result does not depend on a specific form of the pairwise interaction potential, contrary to the 3D case. A new form of the 2D Gross-Pitaevskii equation is proposed within our scheme.

arXiv:cond-mat/0103632•Physical review. E, Statistical physics, plasmas, fluids, and related interdisciplinary topics•Jul 27, 2001•45 citations

Bosons in a Trap: Asymptotic Exactness of the Gross-Pitaevskii Ground State Energy Formula

Robert Seiringer

Recent experimental breakthroughs in the treatment of dilute Bose gases have renewed interest in their quantum mechanical description, respectively in approximations to it. The ground state properties of dilute Bose gases confined in external potentials and interacting via repulsive short range forces are usually described by means of the Gross-Pitaevskii energy functional. In joint work with Elliott H. Lieb and Jakob Yngvason its status as an approximation for the quantum mechanical many-body ground state problem has recently been rigorously clarified. We present a summary of this work, for both the two-and three-dimensional case. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

arXiv:math-ph/0010006•Birkhäuser Basel eBooks•Jan 1, 2001•4 citations

A study of trapped Bose gas beyond mean-field theory

Arup Banerjee, Manoranjan P. Singh

We study the ground-state properties of dilute Bose gas confined to both isotropic and anisotropic traps to assess the accuracy of Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) theory. To go beyond GP approximation we use Huang-Yang theory of interatomic interaction energy for hard-sphere Bose gas and use a variational method to solve the resulting modified GP equation. We also make an analytic estimate of the corrections due to higher-order terms in the interatomic interaction energy. We find that the corrections are of the order of 1 percent. However, there is a qualitative change in the density profile due to presence of logarithimic term in the interaction energy for large N (number of atoms)

arXiv:cond-mat/0009023•Sep 2, 2000•0 citations

The Ground State of the Bose Gas

Élliott H. Lieb, Robert Seiringer, Jan Philip Solovej +1 more

Now that the low temperature properties of quantum-mechanical many-body systems (bosons) at low density, $ρ$, can be examined experimentally it is appropriate to revisit some of the formulas deduced by many authors 4-5 decades ago. For systems with repulsive (i.e. positive) interaction potentials the experimental low temperature state and the ground state are effectively synonymous -- and this fact is used in all modeling. In such cases, the leading term in the energy/particle is $2π\hbar^2 a ρ/m$ where $a$ is the scattering length of the two-body potential. Owing to the delicate and peculiar nature of bosonic correlations (such as the strange $N^{7/5}$ law for charged bosons), four decades of research failed to establish this plausible formula rigorously. The only previous lower bound for the energy was found by Dyson in 1957, but it was 14 times too small. The correct asymptotic formula has recently been obtained by us and this work will be presented. The reason behind the mathematical difficulties will be emphasized. A different formula, postulated as late as 1971 by Schick, holds in two-dimensions and this, too, will be shown to be correct. With the aid of the methodology developed to prove the lower bound for the homogeneous gas, two other problems have been successfully addressed. One is the proof by us that the Gross-Pitaevskii equation correctly describes the ground state in the `traps' actually used in the experiments. For this system it is also possible to prove complete Bose condensation, as we have shown. Another topic is a proof that Foldy's 1961 theory of a high density Bose gas of charged particles correctly describes its ground state energy.

arXiv:math-ph/0204027•Apr 11, 2002•5 citations

Overlap of exact and Gross-Pitaevskii wave functions in Bose-Einstein condensates of dilute gases

Shachar Klaiman, L. S. Cederbaum

It has been proven theoretically for bosons with two-body repulsive interaction potentials in the dilute limit that the Gross-Pitaevskii equation provides the exact energy and density per particle as does the basic many-particle Schr\"odinger equation [E. H. Lieb and R. Seiringer, Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 170409 (2002)]. Here, we investigate the overlap of the Gross-Pitaevskii and exact ground-state wave functions. It is found that this overlap is always smaller than unity and may even vanish despite the fact that both wave functions provide the same energy and density per particle. Consequences are discussed.

arXiv:1609.05895•Physical Review A•Dec 29, 2016•25 citations

I formulate a 'pseudo-paradox' in the theory of a dilute Bose gas with repulsive interactions: the standard expression for the ground state energy within the Gross–Pitaevskii (GP) approximation is lower than that in the Bogoliubov approximation, and hence, by the standard variational argument, the former should prima facie be a better approximation than the latter to the true ground state—a conclusion which is of course opposite to the established wisdom concerning this problem. It is shown that the pseudo-paradox is (unsurprisingly) resolved by a correct transcription of the two-body scattering theory to the many-body case; however, contrary to what appears to be a widespread belief, the resolution has nothing to do with any spurious ultraviolet divergences which result from the replacement of the true interatomic potential by a delta-function pseudopotential. Rather, it relates to an infrared divergence which has the consequence that (a) the most obvious form of the GP 'approximation' actually does not correspond to any well-defined ansatz for the many-body wavefunction, and (b) that the 'best shot' at such a wavefunction always produces an energy which exceeds, or at best equals, that calculated in the Bogoliubov approximation. In fact, the necessity of the latter may be seen as a consequence of the need to reduce the Fock term in the energy, which is absent in the two-particle problem but dominant in the many-body case; it does this by increasing the density correlations, at distances less than or approximately equal to the correlation length , above the value extrapolated from the two-body case. As a by-product I devise an alternative formulation of the Bogoliubov approximation which does not require the explicit replacement of the true interatomic potential by a delta-function pseudopotential.

When calculating the ground-state energy of a weakly interacting Bose gas with the help of the customary contact pseudopotential, one meets an artifical ultraviolet divergence which is caused by the incorrect treatment of the true interparticle interactions at small distances. We argue that this problem can be avoided by retaining the actual, momentum-dependent interaction matrix elements, and use this insight for computing both the ground-state energy and the depletions of a binary Bose gas mixture. Even when considering the experimentally relevant case of equal masses of both species, the resulting expressions are quite involved, and they are no straightforward generalizations of the known single-species formulas. On the other hand, we demonstrate in detail how these latter formulas are recovered from our two-species results in the limit of vanishing interspecies interaction.

A dilute homogeneous two-dimensional (2D) Bose gas at zero temperature is studied with the method developed earlier by the authors. This method allows for considering renormalization of an arbitrary pairwise potential in a self-consistent manner, without the pseudopotential delta-function representation. Low-density expansions are derived for the chemical potential, ground-state energy, pair distribution function, kinetic and interaction energies. The expansion parameter is found to be a dimensionless in-medium scattering amplitude u obeying the equation 1/u+ln u=-ln(na(2)pi)-2gamma, where na(2) and gamma are the gas parameter and the Euler constant, respectively. It is shown that the ground-state energy is mostly kinetic in the low-density limit. This result does not depend on a specific form of the pairwise interaction potential, contrary to the 3D case. A new form of the 2D Gross-Pitaevskii equation is proposed within our scheme.

Recent experimental breakthroughs in the treatment of dilute Bose gases have renewed interest in their quantum mechanical description, respectively in approximations to it. The ground state properties of dilute Bose gases confined in external potentials and interacting via repulsive short range forces are usually described by means of the Gross-Pitaevskii energy functional. In joint work with Elliott H. Lieb and Jakob Yngvason its status as an approximation for the quantum mechanical many-body ground state problem has recently been rigorously clarified. We present a summary of this work, for both the two-and three-dimensional case. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

We study the ground-state properties of dilute Bose gas confined to both isotropic and anisotropic traps to assess the accuracy of Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) theory. To go beyond GP approximation we use Huang-Yang theory of interatomic interaction energy for hard-sphere Bose gas and use a variational method to solve the resulting modified GP equation. We also make an analytic estimate of the corrections due to higher-order terms in the interatomic interaction energy. We find that the corrections are of the order of 1 percent. However, there is a qualitative change in the density profile due to presence of logarithimic term in the interaction energy for large N (number of atoms)

Now that the low temperature properties of quantum-mechanical many-body systems (bosons) at low density,

ρ

, can be examined experimentally it is appropriate to revisit some of the formulas deduced by many authors 4-5 decades ago. For systems with repulsive (i.e. positive) interaction potentials the experimental low temperature state and the ground state are effectively synonymous -- and this fact is used in all modeling. In such cases, the leading term in the energy/particle is

2π\hbar^2 a ρ/m

where

a

is the scattering length of the two-body potential. Owing to the delicate and peculiar nature of bosonic correlations (such as the strange

N^{7/5}

law for charged bosons), four decades of research failed to establish this plausible formula rigorously. The only previous lower bound for the energy was found by Dyson in 1957, but it was 14 times too small. The correct asymptotic formula has recently been obtained by us and this work will be presented. The reason behind the mathematical difficulties will be emphasized. A different formula, postulated as late as 1971 by Schick, holds in two-dimensions and this, too, will be shown to be correct. With the aid of the methodology developed to prove the lower bound for the homogeneous gas, two other problems have been successfully addressed. One is the proof by us that the Gross-Pitaevskii equation correctly describes the ground state in the `traps' actually used in the experiments. For this system it is also possible to prove complete Bose condensation, as we have shown. Another topic is a proof that Foldy's 1961 theory of a high density Bose gas of charged particles correctly describes its ground state energy.

It has been proven theoretically for bosons with two-body repulsive interaction potentials in the dilute limit that the Gross-Pitaevskii equation provides the exact energy and density per particle as does the basic many-particle Schr\"odinger equation [E. H. Lieb and R. Seiringer, Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 170409 (2002)]. Here, we investigate the overlap of the Gross-Pitaevskii and exact ground-state wave functions. It is found that this overlap is always smaller than unity and may even vanish despite the fact that both wave functions provide the same energy and density per particle. Consequences are discussed.