Quantitative Determination of Statistical Properties of Optical Fields by Pade Approximants.

Michael J. Brown, Ian B. Whittingham

Approximations based on two-particle irreducible (2PI) effective actions (also known as Φ-derivable, Cornwall–Jackiw–Tomboulis or Luttinger–Ward functionals depending on context) have been widely used in condensed matter and non-equilibrium quantum/statistical field theory because this formalism gives a robust, self-consistent, non-perturbative and systematically improvable approach which avoids problems with secular time evolution. The strengths of 2PI approximations are often described in terms of a selective resummation of Feynman diagrams to infinite order. However, the Feynman diagram series is asymptotic and summation is at best a dangerous procedure. Here we show that, at least in the context of a toy model where exact results are available, the true strength of 2PI approximations derives from their self-consistency rather than any resummation. This self-consistency allows truncated 2PI approximations to capture the branch points of physical amplitudes where adjustments of coupling constants can trigger an instability of the vacuum. This, in effect, turns Dyson's argument for the failure of perturbation theory on its head. As a result we find that 2PI approximations perform better than Padé approximation and are competitive with Borel–Padé resummation. Finally, we introduce a hybrid 2PI–Padé method.

Yuan-Hong Tian, Wen-Du Li, Yao Shen +1 more

Abstract In this paper, we show how to recover the low-temperature and high-density information of ideal quantum gases from the high-temperature and low-density approximation by the Padé approximant. The virial expansion is a high-temperature and low-density expansion and in practice, often, only the first several virial coefficients can be obtained. For Bose gases, we determine the BEC phase transition from a truncated virial expansion. For Fermi gases, we recover the low-temperature and high-density result from the virial expansion.

Rasmus Vesterager Gothelf, Lars Bojer Madsen, Christian Saugbjerg Lange

In recent years, strong-field processes such as high-order harmonic generation (HHG) and above-threshold ionization driven by nonclassical states of light have become an increasingly popular field of study. The theoretical modeling of these processes often applies an approximate phase-space expansion of the nonclassical driving field in terms of coherent states, which has been shown to accurately predict the harmonic spectrum. However, its accuracy for the computation of quantum optical observables like the degree of squeezing and photon statistics has not been thoroughly considered. In this work, we introduce this approximative phase-space description and discuss its accuracy, and we find that it mischaracterizes the quantum optical properties of the driving laser by making it an incoherent mixture of classical states. We further show that this error in the driving field description maps onto the light emitted from HHG, as neither sub-Poissonian photon statistics nor quadrature squeezing below vacuum fluctuations can be captured by the approximative phase-space description. Lastly, to benchmark the approximative phase-space description, we consider the quantum HHG from a one-band model, which yields an exact analytical solution. Using the approximative phase-space representation with this specific model, we find a small quantitative error in the quadrature variance of the emitted field that scales with pulse duration and emitter density. Our results show that using this approximative phase-space description can mischaracterize quantum optical observables. Attributing physical meaning to such results should therefore be accompanied by a quantitative analysis of the error.

Gabriel Popescu

V. P. Vykov, G V Shepelev