Abstract We re-investigate the entire family of many center point interaction Hamiltonians. Under the assumption of exchange symmetry with respect to the point positions, we show that a large sub-family of point interaction Hamiltonian operators does not become either singular or trivial when the positions of two or more scattering centers tend to coincide. In this sense, they appear to be renormalized by default as opposed to the point interaction Hamiltonians usually considered in the literature. Functions in their domains satisfy regularized boundary conditions which turn out to be very similar to the ones proposed recently in many-body quantum mechanics to define three-particle system Hamiltonians with contact interactions bounded from below. In the two-center case, we study the behavior of the negative eigenvalues as a function of the center distance. The result is used to analyze a formal Born–Oppenheimer approximation of a three-particle system with two heavy bosons and one light particle. We demonstrate that this simplified model describes a stable system (no ‘fall to the center’ problem is present). Furthermore, in the unitary limit, the energy spectrum is characterized by an infinite sequence of negative energy eigenvalues accumulating at zero according to the geometrical Efimov law.
Abstract We re-investigate the entire family of many center point interaction Hamiltonians. Under the assumption of exchange symmetry with respect to the point positions, we show that a large sub-family of point interaction Hamiltonian operators does not become either singular or trivial when the positions of two or more scattering centers tend to coincide. In this sense, they appear to be renormalized by default as opposed to the point interaction Hamiltonians usually considered in the literature. Functions in their domains satisfy regularized boundary conditions which turn out to be very similar to the ones proposed recently in many-body quantum mechanics to define three-particle system Hamiltonians with contact interactions bounded from below. In the two-center case, we study the behavior of the negative eigenvalues as a function of the center distance. The result is used to analyze a formal Born–Oppenheimer approximation of a three-particle system with two heavy bosons and one light particle. We demonstrate that this simplified model describes a stable system (no ‘fall to the center’ problem is present). Furthermore, in the unitary limit, the energy spectrum is characterized by an infinite sequence of negative energy eigenvalues accumulating at zero according to the geometrical Efimov law.
In this note we discuss the Efimov effect emerging in a three-particle quantum system with zero-range interactions. In particular, we consider two non-interacting identical bosons plus a different lighter particle such that the interaction between a boson and the light particle is resonant. We also assume the validity of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. Under these conditions, we show that the three-particle system exhibits infinitely many negative eigenvalues which accumulate at zero and satisfy the universal geometrical law characterising the Efimov effect. The result we find is a generalisation of previous results recently obtained in [13, 24].
We study the Born–Oppenheimer approximation of a mass-imbalanced three-body system made of two heavy particles of mass M and one light particle of mass m for arbitrary angular momentum. In this system, heavy-light pairs interact via a zero-range force. We construct the light-particle Hamiltonian using self-adjoint extensions of the two-center point interaction and show that the corresponding effective potential is regular at the coincidence point of the heavy particles. Consequently, this model presents an alternative method to finite-range, cutoff, or short-distance heavy-heavy regularizations: the necessary three-body input is encoded in the self-adjoint realization of the light-particle Hamiltonian, while the heavy-light interactions remain point-like. In the unitary limit, after fixing the characteristic length scale, we derive an explicit Efimov spectrum. Our results recover the zero-angular-momentum case of [] and provide a sufficient condition ensuring the absence of non-Efimov bound states. Away from unitarity, we show that the spatial size of the shallowest trimer near the threshold is approximately 2.8 times the heavy-light scattering length, in contrast with the common assumption that these two length scales coincide. We also derive a Bargmann-type bound on the number of three-body bound states and obtain an estimate sharper than previous results. Finally, we illustrate the method with numerical results for selected alkali mixtures.
Abstract We consider a system of three identical bosons in R3 R 3 with two-body zero-range interactions and a three-body hard-core repulsion of a given radius a>0 a > 0 . Using a quadratic form approach, we prove that the corresponding Hamiltonian is self-adjoint and bounded from below for any value of a . In particular, this means that the hard-core repulsion is sufficient to prevent the fall to the center phenomenon found by Minlos and Faddeev in their seminal work on the three-body problem in 1961. Furthermore, in the case of infinite two-body scattering length, also known as unitary limit, we prove the Efimov effect, i.e., we show that the Hamiltonian has an infinite sequence of negative eigenvalues En E n accumulating at zero and fulfilling the asymptotic geometrical law En+1/En→e−s02πforn→+∞ E n + 1 / E n → e - 2 π s 0 for n → + ∞ holds, where s0≈1.00624 s 0 ≈ 1.00624 .
The present paper is devoted to the study of the few–body quantum mechanical problem with singular finite rank cluster interactions. The corresponding Hamiltonians play an important role in mathematical physics, since few body Hamiltonians with more regular interactions present considerable difficulties which make impossible a detailed analytic study [ 13 ]. Also a numerical study of such Hamiltonians using Faddeev equations present very hard problems, since the interaction between the particles does not vanish at large distances. On the other hand few-body problems with singular cluster interaction are useful and intensively studied in statistical physics, since the corresponding Hamiltonians can be analyzed in detail even if the number of particles is very large. Models describing one dimensional particles are of particular interest, since the eigenfunctions of the many body Hamiltonians can often be calculated using Bethe Ansatz [ 14 ]. In fact the well-known Yang-Baxter equation was first written in connection with the study of system of several one-dimensional particles with pairwise delta interactions. Similar methods were used in atomic physics to study collisions of several particles [ 12 ] (in three dimensions). Few-body systems in applications are usually investigated by combining the classical description of the dynamics of heavy atoms with the quantum description of the dynamics of electrons and other light particles. The first attempt to construct a three body Hamiltonian describing three quantum particles in R 3 interacting through pairwise delta functional potentials is due to G.V. Skorniakov and K.A.Ter-Martirosian [ 29 ]. R.A.Minlos and L.D.Faddeev proved that the corresponding Hamiltonian is not bounded from below and therefore cannot be used in 278 the originally intended physical applications [ 24 , 25 ]. The operator was defined using the method of self–adjoint perturbations used by F.A.Berezin and L.D.Faddeev for investigating Schödinger operators with delta potential in R 3 [ 10 ]. Almost three decades later semibounded three-body operators in dimension three with generalized two-body interactions were constructed by extending the standard Hilbert space of square integrable functions in R 9 [ 17 , 18 , 19 , 27 , 30 ]. The most interesting model considered used the theory of generalized extensions suggested by B.Pavlov [ 7 , 26 ]. Different aspects of these models were analyzed recently [ 8 , 23 , 20 ]. A general approach to these operators is described in [ 7 , 22 ]. Let us mention that a realization of a many-body lower bounded Hamiltonian with point interactions for particles in R 3 has been obtained in the original Hilbert space by using the theory of Dirichlet forms [ 2 ]. The few-body systems of two dimensional particles with two-body interactions was studied in [ 11 ], where it was proven that the corresponding Hamiltonian is semibounded.
We present the mathematical construction of the physically relevant quantum Hamiltonians for a three-body system consisting of identical bosons mutually coupled by a two-body interaction of zero range. For a large part of the presentation, infinite scattering length will be considered (the unitarity regime). The subject has several precursors in the mathematical literature. We proceed through an operator-theoretic construction of the self-adjoint extensions of the minimal operator obtained by restricting the free Hamiltonian to wave-functions that vanish in the vicinity of the coincidence hyperplanes: all extensions thus model an interaction precisely supported at the spatial configurations where particles come on top of each other. Among them, we select the physically relevant ones, by implementing in the operator construction the presence of the specific short-scale structure suggested by formal physical arguments that are ubiquitous in the physical literature on zero-range methods. This is done by applying at different stages the self-adjoint extension schemes à la Kreĭn–Višik–Birman and à la von Neumann. We produce a class of canonical models for which we also analyze the structure of the negative bound states. Bosonicity and zero range combined together make such canonical models display the typical Thomas and Efimov spectra, i.e. sequence of energy eigenvalues accumulating to both minus infinity and zero. We also discuss a type of regularization that prevents such spectral instability while retaining an effective short-scale pattern. Besides the operator qualification, we also present the associated energy quadratic forms. We structured our analysis so as to clarify certain steps of the operator-theoretic construction that are notoriously subtle for the correct identification of a domain of self-adjointness.
In this paper, we study the Hamiltonian for a three-dimensional Bose gas of [Formula: see text] spinless particles interacting via zero-range (also known as contact) interactions. Such interactions are encoded by (singular) boundary conditions imposed on the coincidence hyperplanes, i.e. when the coordinates of two particles coincide. It is well known that imposing the same kind of boundary conditions as in the two-body problem with a point interaction leads to a Hamiltonian unbounded from below (and thus unstable). This is due to the fact that the interaction becomes overly strong and attractive when the coordinates of three or more particles coincide. In order to avoid such instability, we develop a suggestion originally formulated by Minlos and Faddeev in 1962, introducing slightly modified boundary conditions that weaken the strength of the interaction between two particles i and j in two scenarios: (a) a third particle approaches the common position of i and j; (b) another distinct pair of particles approach each other. In all other cases, the usual boundary condition is restored. Using a quadratic form approach, we construct a class of Hamiltonians characterized by such modified boundary conditions, that are self-adjoint and bounded from below. We also compare our approach with the one developed years ago by Albeverio, Høegh-Krohn and Streit using the theory of Dirichlet forms [J. Math. Phys. 18 (1977) 907–917]. In particular, we show that the N-body Hamiltonian defined by Albeverio et al. is a special case of our class of Hamiltonians. Furthermore, we also introduce a Dirichlet form by considering a more general weight function, and we prove that the corresponding N-body Hamiltonians essentially coincide with those constructed via our method.