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Journal of Physics A Mathematical and General

Percolation transition in the Bose gas

András Sütö

Published Sep 21, 1993• 59 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The canonical partition function of a Bose gas gives rise to a probability distribution over the permutations of N particles. The author studies the probability and mean value of the cycle lengths in the cyclic permutations, their relation to physical quantities like pair correlations, and their thermodynamic limit. He shows that in the ground state of most interacting boson gases the mean cycle length diverges in the bulk limit and the particles form macroscopic cycles. In the free Bose gas Bose-Einstein condensation is accompanied by a percolation transition: the appearance of infinite cycle with nonvanishing probability.

DOI
10.1088/0305-4470/26/18/031

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The canonical partition function of a Bose gas gives rise to a probability distribution over the permutations of N particles. The author studies the probability and mean value of the cycle lengths in the cyclic permutations, their relation to physical quantities like pair correlations, and their thermodynamic limit. He shows that in the ground state of most interacting boson gases the mean cycle length diverges in the bulk limit and the particles form macroscopic cycles. In the free Bose gas Bose-Einstein condensation is accompanied by a percolation transition: the appearance of infinite cycle with nonvanishing probability.
We discuss the relationship between the cycle probabilities in the path-integral representation of the ideal Bose gas, off-diagonal long-range order, and Bose-Einstein condensation. Starting from the Landsberg recursion relation for the canonic partition function, we use elementary considerations to show that in a box of size L3 the sum of the cycle probabilities of length k>>L2 equals the off-diagonal long-range order parameter in the thermodynamic limit. For arbitrary systems of ideal bosons, the integer derivative of the cycle probabilities is related to the probability of condensing k bosons. We use this relation to derive the precise form of the pik in the thermodynamic limit. We also determine the function pik for arbitrary systems. Furthermore, we use the cycle probabilities to compute the probability distribution of the maximum-length cycles both at T=0, where the ideal Bose gas reduces to the study of random permutations, and at finite temperature. We close with comments on the cycle probabilities in interacting Bose gases.
We examine a phase transition in a model of random spatial permutations which originates in a study of the interacting Bose gas. Permutations are weighted according to point positions; the low-temperature onset of the appearance of arbitrarily long cycles is connected to the phase transition of Bose-Einstein condensates. In our simplified model, point positions are held fixed on the fully occupied cubic lattice and interactions are expressed as Ewens-type weights on cycle lengths of permutations. The critical temperature of the transition to long cycles depends on an interaction-strength parameter α. For weak interactions, the shift in critical temperature is expected to be linear in α with constant of linearity c. Using Markov chain Monte Carlo methods and finite-size scaling, we find c = 0.618±0.086. This finding matches a similar analytical result of Ueltschi and Betz. We also examine the mean longest cycle length as a fraction of the number of sites in long cycles, recovering an earlier result of Shepp and Lloyd for non-spatial permutations. The plan of this paper is as follows. We begin with a non-technical discussion of the historical context of the project, along with a mention of alternative approaches. Relevant previous works are cited, thus annotating the bibliography. The random-cycle approach to the BEC problem requires a model of spatial permutations. This model it is of its own probabilistic interest; it is developed mathematically, without reference to the Bose gas. Our Markov-chain Monte Carlo algorithms for sampling from the random-cycle distribution—the swap-only, swap-and-reverse, band-update, and worm algorithms—are presented, compared, and contrasted. Finite-size scaling techniques are used to obtain information about infinite-volume quantities from finite-volume computational data.
Abstract In the first-quantized description of bosonic systems permutation cycles formed by the particles play a fundamental role. In the ideal Bose gas Bose-Enstein condensation (BEC) is signaled by the appearance of infinite cycles. When the particles interact, the two phenomena may not be simultaneous, the existence of infinite cycles is necessary but not sufficient for BEC. We demonstrate that their appearance is always accompanied by a singularity in the thermodynamic quantities which in three and four dimensions can be as strong as a one-sided divergence of the isothermal compressibility. Arguments are presented that long-range interactions can give rise to unexpected results, such as the absence of infinite cycles in three dimensions for long-range repulsion or their presence in one and two dimensions if the pair potential has a long attractive tail.
Based on the paper "Fourier formula for quantum partition functions", arXiv:2106.10032 [math-ph], we show that in an infinite system of identical bosons interacting via a positive-type pair potential there is off-diagonal long-range order if and only if a nonzero fraction of the particles form infinite permutation cycles. In particular, there is Bose-Einstein condensation if and only if the diverging cycle lengths increase at least as fast with NNN, the number of particles, as N2/dN^{2/d}N2/d in d≥3d\geq 3d≥3 dimensions. This extends a similar result known for the ideal Bose gas.
We prove two equilibrium properties of a system of interacting atoms in three or higher dimensional continuous space. (i) If the particles interact via pair potentials of a nonnegative Fourier transform, their self-organization into infinite permutation cycles is simultaneous with off-diagonal long-range order. If the cycle lengths tend to infinity not slower than the square of the linear extension of the system, there is also Bose-Einstein condensation. (ii) If the pair potential is also nonnegative, cycles composed of a nonzero fraction of the total number of particles do appear if the density exceeds a temperature-dependent threshold value. The two together constitute the proof that in such a system Bose-Einstein condensation takes place at high enough densities.