Beyond the Gross-Pitaevskii Equation, Quantum Many-Body Perturbation Theory for Bose-Einstein Condensates

Ashraf A. Abulseoud, Hala H. Alsayad, Tharwat M. El-Sherbini

Brett Allen McKinney

Feshbach resonances notwithstanding, most experimentally realized atomic-vapor condensates are dilute and are best described by the mean-field Gross-Pitaevskii equation. For this reason, we use dimensional scaling methods to obtain an analytical approximation to the GP equation that is more accurate and flexible than the commonly used ground-state Thomas-Fermi approximation. We also demonstrate the power of dimensional perturbation theory by providing a full solution of a model BEC Hamiltonian and a two-electron quantum dot Hamiltonian. A feature shared by these examples is the high degree of accuracy provided by the lowest orders of the perturbation theory. In our approach to the full many-body BEC Hamiltonian, we use the lowest orders of many-body dimensional perturbation theory to obtain semi-analytical ground-state energies and collective excitation frequencies. Our many-body calculations for BEC's compare well with the Gross-Pitaevskii results in the weakly-interacting regime, as they should, and are much improved over mean-field theory predictions in the strongly-interacting regime.

Brett Allen McKinney, Martin Dunn, D. K. Watson

D. Belobo Belobo, G. H. Ben-Bolie, Timoléon Crépin Kofané

Beyond the mean-field theory, a new model of the Gross–Pitaevskii equation (GPE) that describes the dynamics of Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) is derived using an appropriate phase-imprint on the old wavefunction. This modified version of the GPE in addition to the two-body interactions term, also takes into account effects of the three-body interactions. The three-body interactions consist of a quintic term and the delayed nonlinear response of the condensate system term. Then, the modulational instability (MI) of the new GPE confined in an attractive harmonic potential is investigated. The analytical study shows that the three-body interactions destabilize more the condensate system while the external potential alleviates the instability. Numerical results confirm the theoretical predictions. Further numerical investigations of the behavior of solitons reveal that the three-body interactions enhance the appearance of solitons, increase the number of solitons generated and deeply change the lifetime of solitons. Moreover, the external potential delays the appearance of solitons. Besides, a new initial condition is introduced which enables to increase the number of solitons created and deeply affects the trail of chains of solitons generated. Moreover, the MI of a condensate without the external potential, and in a repulsive potential is also investigated.

Iva Březinová, Axel U. J. Lode, Alexej I. Streltsov +3 more

We study the expansion of repulsively interacting Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) in shallow one-dimensional potentials. We show for these systems that the onset of wave chaos in the Gross-Pitaevskii equation (GPE), that is, the onset of exponential separation in Hilbert space of two nearby condensate wave functions, can be used as an indication for the onset of depletion of the BEC and the occupation of excited modes within a many-body description. Comparison between the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree for bosons method and the GPE reveals a close correspondence between the many-body effect of depletion and the mean-field effect of wave chaos for a wide range of single-particle external potentials. In the regime of wave chaos the GPE fails to account for the fine-scale quantum fluctuations because many-body effects beyond the validity of the GPE are non-negligible. Surprisingly, despite the failure of the GPE to account for the depletion, coarse-grained expectation values of the single-particle density such as the overall width of the atomic cloud agree very well with the many-body simulations. The time-dependent depletion of the condensate could be investigated experimentally, for example, via decay of coherence of the expanding atom cloud.

Kaspar Sakmann