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An HNC Approach to Strongly Interacting Ultracold Bose Gases

T. C. F. van Heijst, Henk T. C. Stoof

Published Jan 1, 2011• 1 citation
OpenAlex

Abstract

We argue that the energy of a strongly interacting gas in the unitary limit is parametrized by a universal constant β. For fermions, this parameter is known, but not for bosons. Finding β for bosons is the goal of this thesis. We present the basics of scattering theory, including the s-wave scattering length, which is the characteristic length scale for the interactions at low energies and which goes to infinity at unitarity. Shape and Feshbach resonances are explained. The conventional theory for Bose gases, Bogoliubov theory, is presented, which takes into account quantum fluctuations. It is used to derive identities for the groundstate energy, the condensate fraction and the contact. These are given as expansions in the scattering length, which therefore only hold true for weak interactions. To improve on this, we present an effective action from an atom-molecule theory, which also allows bound states. By a mean-field approach we derive universal identities for the associated energy scales, and in the unitary limit an analytical expression is found for the chemical potential, from which the value β = −0.54 is found. However, this mean-field result is qualitatively not reliable, since quantum depletion is neglected. A new approach is introduced, starting with a Jastrow Ansatz, from which the energy is expressed in the Jastrow function f and radial distribution function g. A cluster expansion is made for g, where a diagrammatic analogy is found. The Hyper-Netted Chain approximation is introduced to calculate g systematically by summing infinitely many diagrams. In HNC/0, we minimize the energy by a variational method, which is based on a well-constructed Ansatz for g. Numerical results using the HNC/0 approximation are given not only for the ground-state energy, but also for the condensate density and the contact. For large scattering lengths the calculations became increasingly less accurate, but the results from Bogoliubov theory are correctly included for small a. An extrapolation for the ground-state energy is made to find β ' −0.20, which is expected to be an upper bound. Moreover, quantum depletion is found to be higher when calculated in HNC/0 for large scattering lengths. Also, it is found that the contact at this value for unitarity remains finite and acquires the value of C ' 10.3n4/3, which is remarkably close to the value for fermions, C ' 11n4/3. Cover image courtesy of [18].

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We argue that the energy of a strongly interacting gas in the unitary limit is parametrized by a universal constant β. For fermions, this parameter is known, but not for bosons. Finding β for bosons is the goal of this thesis. We present the basics of scattering theory, including the s-wave scattering length, which is the characteristic length scale for the interactions at low energies and which goes to infinity at unitarity. Shape and Feshbach resonances are explained. The conventional theory for Bose gases, Bogoliubov theory, is presented, which takes into account quantum fluctuations. It is used to derive identities for the groundstate energy, the condensate fraction and the contact. These are given as expansions in the scattering length, which therefore only hold true for weak interactions. To improve on this, we present an effective action from an atom-molecule theory, which also allows bound states. By a mean-field approach we derive universal identities for the associated energy scales, and in the unitary limit an analytical expression is found for the chemical potential, from which the value β = −0.54 is found. However, this mean-field result is qualitatively not reliable, since quantum depletion is neglected. A new approach is introduced, starting with a Jastrow Ansatz, from which the energy is expressed in the Jastrow function f and radial distribution function g. A cluster expansion is made for g, where a diagrammatic analogy is found. The Hyper-Netted Chain approximation is introduced to calculate g systematically by summing infinitely many diagrams. In HNC/0, we minimize the energy by a variational method, which is based on a well-constructed Ansatz for g. Numerical results using the HNC/0 approximation are given not only for the ground-state energy, but also for the condensate density and the contact. For large scattering lengths the calculations became increasingly less accurate, but the results from Bogoliubov theory are correctly included for small a. An extrapolation for the ground-state energy is made to find β ' −0.20, which is expected to be an upper bound. Moreover, quantum depletion is found to be higher when calculated in HNC/0 for large scattering lengths. Also, it is found that the contact at this value for unitarity remains finite and acquires the value of C ' 10.3n4/3, which is remarkably close to the value for fermions, C ' 11n4/3. Cover image courtesy of [18].
We develop an analytical approach for the description of the crossover of an atomic Bose gas from small to infinitely large scattering length where the two-body interactions satisfy the unitarity bound. We obtain several properties of the Bose gas as a function of interaction strength, namely the chemical potential, the contact, the speed of sound, the condensate density, the effective interatomic interaction and the three-body recombination rate. Also, the energy dependence of the effective interaction at unitarity and the evolution of the Feshbach bound state are discussed. It is shown how the approach can be systematically improved with renormalization-group methods and how it reduces to the Bogoliubov theory in the weak-coupling limit.
We show that a two-channel mean-field theory for a Bose gas near a Feshbach resonance allows for an analytic computation of the chemical potential, and therefore the universal constant $\ensuremath{\beta}$, at unitarity. To improve on this mean-field theory, which physically neglects condensate depletion, we study a variational Jastrow ansatz for the ground-state wave function and use the hypernetted-chain approximation to minimize the energy for all positive values of the scattering length. We also show that other important physical quantities such as Tan's contact and the condensate fraction can be directly obtained from this approach.
In the first part of this thesis, we present an inhomogeneous theory for the low-temperature properties of a resonantly interacting Fermi mixture in a trap that goes beyond the local-density approximation. We compare a Bogoliubov-de Gennes and a Landau-Ginzburg approach that both include mean-field-like self-energy effects to account for the strong interactions at unitarity. We conclude that the Landau-Ginzburg approach is more appropriate when dealing with a first-order phase transition. We show diagrammatically how these self-energy effects arise from fluctuations in the superfluid order parameter. Gradient terms of the order parameter are included to account for inhomogeneities. This approach incorporates the state-of-the-art knowledge of the homogeneous mixture with a population imbalance exactly and gives good agreement with the experimental density profiles of Shin et al. [Nature 451, 689 (2008)]. We calculate the universal surface tension due to the observed interface between the equal-density superfluid and the partially polarized normal state of the mixture. We find that the exotic and gapless superfluid Sarma phase can be stabilized at this interface, even when this phase is unstable in the bulk of the gas. We also discuss the possibility of a metastable state to explain the deformation of the superfluid core that is seen in the experiment of Partridge et al. [Science 311, 503 (2006)]. In the second part, we show that a two-channel mean-field theory for a Bose gas near a Feshbach resonance allows for an analytic computation of the chemical potential, and therefore the universal constant β, at unitarity. To improve on this mean-field theory, which physically neglects condensate depletion, we study a variational Jastrow ansatz for the ground-state wavefunction and use the hypernetted-chain (HNC/0) approximation to minimize the energy for all positive values of the scattering length. We also show that other important physical quantities such as Tan's contact and the condensate fraction can be directly obtained from this approach.
We develop an analytical approach for the description of an atomic Bose gas at unitarity. By focusing in first instance on the evaluation of the single-particle density matrix, we derive several universal properties of the unitary Bose gas, such as the chemical potential, the contact, the speed of sound, the condensate density and the effective interatomic interaction. The theory is also generalized to describe Bose gases with a finite scattering length and then reduces to the Bogoliubov theory in the weak-coupling limit.
We consider a cold Bose gas in the unitarity limit. The unitarity limit corresponds to the limit where the scattering length goes to infinity. In this thesis we first review basic quantummechanical scattering theory and explain the physics of Feshbach resonances. After that we discuss a many-body theory, which exactly incorporates the two-body physics of a Feshbach resonance. In a mean-field approximation we obtain a divergence of the energy per particle in the unitarity limit. Beyond mean field the spectral function is ill behaved. To get more insight into these problems, we also discuss a model of linearly coupled atoms and phonons. A generalized Bogoliubov transformation is used to obtain expressions for the quantized atomic and phonon field operators. Finally, we use these operators to calculate some correlation functions.
We investigate the many-body properties of two distinct degenerate systems with strong interactions, namely that of a quark-gluon plasma and of an atomic Bose gas. In the first part of this thesis, the temperature dependence of the thermodynamic potential of quantum chromodynamics is studied. In particular, the specific heat and the quark effective mass are calculated for imbalanced quark matter in the limit of a large number of quark flavors (large-Nf), which corresponds to the random phase approximation. Also, a generalization of the Landau effective-mass relation for the imbalanced case within relativistic Landau-Fermi liquid theory is derived. The effects of imbalance is expected to have important consequences on the properties of quark matter in the core of neutron stars. In the second part, we develop an analytical approach for the description of the crossover of an atomic Bose gas from small to infinitely large scattering length (unitarity). We obtain several properties of the Bose gas as a function of interaction strength, such as the chemical potential, the contact, the speed of sound, the condensate density, the effective interatomic interaction and the three-body recombination rate. It is shown how the approach can be systematically improved with renormalization-group methods and that it reduces to the Bogoliubov theory in the weak-coupling limit.