We consider
N atoms trapped in an isotropic harmonic potential, with
s-wave interactions of infinite scattering length. In the zero-range limit, we obtain several exact analytical results: mapping between the trapped problem and the free-space zero-energy problem, separability in hyperspherical coordinates, SO(2,1) hidden symmetry, existence of a decoupled bosonic degree of freedom, and relations between the moments of the trapping potential energy and the moments of the total energy.
We consider either 3 spinless bosons or 3 equal mass spin-1/2 fermions, interacting via a short-range potential of infinite scattering length and trapped in an isotropic harmonic potential. For a zero-range model, we obtain analytically the exact spectrum and eigenfunctions: for fermions all the states are universal; for bosons there is a coexistence of decoupled universal and efimovian states. All the universal states, even the bosonic ones, have a tiny 3-body loss rate. For a finite range model, we numerically find for bosons a coupling between zero angular momentum universal and efimovian states; the coupling is so weak that, for realistic values of the interaction range, these bosonic universal states remain long-lived and observable.
We consider an analytic way to make the interacting N -body problem tractable by using harmonic oscillators in place of the relevant two-body interactions. The two-body terms of the N -body Hamiltonian are approximated by considering the energy spectrum and radius of the relevant two-body problem which gives frequency, centre position, and zero point energy of the corresponding harmonic oscillator. Adding external harmonic one-body terms, we proceed to solve the full quantum mechanical N -body problem analytically for arbitrary masses. Energy eigenvalues, eigenmodes, and correlation functions like density matrices can then be computed analytically. As a first application of our formalism, we consider the N -boson problem in two and three dimensions where we fit the two-body interactions to agree with the well-known zero-range model for two particles in a harmonic trap. Subsequently, condensate fractions, spectra, radii, and eigenmodes are discussed as a function of dimension, boson number N , and scattering length obtained in the zero-range model. We find that energies, radii, and condensate fraction increase with scattering length as well as boson number, while radii decrease with increasing boson number. Our formalism is completely general and can also be applied to fermions, Bose–Fermi mixtures, and to more exotic geometries.
We derive the asymptotic expansions of the wave function of three particles having equal mass with finite-range interactions and infinite or zero two-dimensional scattering length colliding at zero energy and zero orbital angular momentum, from which a three-body parameter
D is defined. The dimension of
D is length squared, and we call
D three-body scattering area. We find that the ground-state energy per particle of a zero-temperature dilute Bose gas with these interactions is approximately $\frac{{\ensuremath{\hbar}}^{2}D}{6m}{\ensuremath{\rho}}^{2}$, where $\ensuremath{\rho}$ is the number density of the bosons and
m is the mass of each boson. Such a zero-temperature Bose gas is stable at
D>0 in the thermodynamic limit, and metastable at
D<0 in the isotropic harmonic trap if the number of bosons is less than ${N}_{\mathrm{cr}}\ensuremath{\approx}3.6413\sqrt{\frac{\ensuremath{\hbar}}{m\ensuremath{\omega}|D|}\phantom{{}^{1}}}$, where $\ensuremath{\omega}$ is the angular frequency of the harmonic trap. If the two-body interaction supports bound states,
D typically acquires a negative imaginary part, and we find the relation between this imaginary part and the amplitudes of the pair-boson production processes. We derive a formula for the three-body recombination rate constant of the many-boson system in terms of the imaginary part of
D.
We study normal state properties of an interacting Fermi gas in an isotropic harmonic trap of arbitrary dimensions. We exactly calculate the first-order perturbation terms in the ground-state energy and chemical potential, and obtain simple analytic expressions of the total energy and chemical potential. At zero temperature, we find that the Thomas–Fermi approximation agrees well with the exact results for any dimension even though the system is small. In the high-temperature (classical) region, we find the interaction energy decreases in proportion to T − d /2 , where T is the temperature and d is the dimension of the system.