Chapter 15. The Beta Function for the Bose Conden

Allan Griffin

In Chapter 3, we have shown how a Bose condensate leads to the single-particle Green's function G αβ ( Q , ω) appearing as a distinct component of the the dynamic structure factor S ( Q , ω). This feature is a direct consequence of (3.13) and is explicitly shown by the expression for S ( Q , ω) in (3.18). In the present chapter, we review the many-body diagrammatic analysis which specifies the precise relation between G αβ ( Q , ω) and S ( Q , ω) in a Bose-condensed fluid ( n 0 ≠ 0). The power of this “dielectric formalism” lies in showing that both functions mirror each other, as a result of the condensate-induced intermixing of single-particle and density excitations. At the same time, the formalism emphasizes the continuity of these excitations as the fluid passes through T λ, although these excitations have very temperature-dependent weights in G αβ ( Q , ω) and S ( Q , ω). While it is the poles of the single-particle Green's function which describe the elementary excitations, experimentally it is difficult to probe directly this field-fluctuation spectrum. In particular, it is only in a Bose-condensed fluid that one can obtain information about G αβ ( Q , ω) from inelastic neutron-scattering data on S ( Q , ω). In the absence of a condensate, there is little relation between the density-fluctuation modes and the single-particle excitations in a Bose fluid. After setting up the dielectric formalism in Section 5.1, the next two sections consider some model approximations at finite temperatures. These models are most appropriate to a dilute weakly interacting Bose gas (WIDBG), but we believe they also give crucial insight into various aspects of superfluid 4 He.

Allan Griffin, Tetsuro Nikuni, E. Zaremba

Single-particle Green's functions, density response functions and other correlation functions are calculated in many different ways in the literature on Bose-condensed gases. An in-depth comparison and classification of different approaches was first given in the classic paper by Hohenberg and Martin (1965), with an emphasis on the various exact identities (conservation laws) that are satisfied. A key feature to be included in any theory is that a Bose broken symmetry leads to a hybridization of the single-particle excitations and the collective density fluctuations in such a way that the two excitation spectra become identical. This key feature is demonstrated in Chapter 5 of Griffin (1993). How to relate and assess various approximations for correlation functions in a Bose superfluid has been a topic of continual interest (and some controversy) since the late 1950s. These questions were largely resolved by the early 1960s at a conceptual level but the detailed applications of the theory were limited to dilute Bose-condensed gases at T = 0. Since it was difficult to relate the theory to the properties of superfluid. He at a quantitative level, this formalism based on a Bose broken symmetry was of little interest to experimentalists. The creation of superfluid Bose condensed gases in 1995 changed all this and has given new life to the many body theory of dilute weakly interacting Bose condensed gases. Various approximations for the Beliaev single-particle self-energies Σ αβ were derived in Sections 4.3 and 4.4. The discussion in Chapter 4 was somewhat abstract.

G. Benfatto, Giovanni Gallavotti

G. Benfatto, Giovanni Gallavotti