In this work we develop a complete variational many-body theory for a system of $N$ trapped bosons interacting via a general two-body potential. The many-body solution of this system is expanded over orthogonal many-body basis functions (configurations). In this theory both the many-body basis functions and the respective expansion coefficients are treated as variational parameters. The optimal variational parameters are obtained self-consistently by solving a coupled system of noneigenvalue---generally integro-differential---equations to get the one-particle functions and by diagonalizing the secular matrix problem to find the expansion coefficients. We call this theory multiconfigurational Hartree theory for bosons or $\mathrm{MCHB}(M)$, where $M$ specifies explicitly the number of one-particle functions used to construct the configurations. General rules for evaluating the matrix elements of one- and two-particle operators are derived and applied to construct the secular Hamiltonian matrix. We discuss properties of the derived equations. We show that in the limiting cases of one configuration the theory boils down to the well-known Gross-Pitaevskii and the recently developed multi-orbital mean fields. The invariance of the complete solution with respect to unitary transformations of the one-particle functions is utilized to find the solution with the minimal number of contributing configurations. In the second part of our work we implement and apply the developed theory. It is demonstrated that for any practical computation where the configurational space is restricted, the description of trapped bosonic systems strongly depends on the choice of the many-body basis set used, i.e., self-consistency is of great relevance. As illustrative examples we consider bosonic systems trapped in one- and two-dimensional symmetric and asymmetric double well potentials. We demonstrate that self-consistency has great impact on the predicted physical properties of the ground and excited states and show that the lack of self-consistency may lead to physically wrong predictions. The convergence of the general $\mathrm{MCHB}(M)$ scheme with a growing number $M$ is validated in a specific case of two bosons trapped in a symmetric double well.
In this work we develop a complete variational many-body theory for a system of N trapped bosons interacting via a general two-body potential. The many-body solution of this system is expanded over orthogonal many-body basis functions (configurations). In this theory both the many-body basis functions and the respective expansion coefficients are treated as variational parameters. The optimal variational parameters are obtained self-consistently by solving a coupled system of noneigenvalue---generally integro-differential---equations to get the one-particle functions and by diagonalizing the secular matrix problem to find the expansion coefficients. We call this theory multiconfigurational Hartree theory for bosons or MCHB(M), where M specifies explicitly the number of one-particle functions used to construct the configurations. General rules for evaluating the matrix elements of one- and two-particle operators are derived and applied to construct the secular Hamiltonian matrix. We discuss properties of the derived equations. We show that in the limiting cases of one configuration the theory boils down to the well-known Gross-Pitaevskii and the recently developed multi-orbital mean fields. The invariance of the complete solution with respect to unitary transformations of the one-particle functions is utilized to find the solution with the minimal number of contributing configurations. In the second part of our work we implement and apply the developed theory. It is demonstrated that for any practical computation where the configurational space is restricted, the description of trapped bosonic systems strongly depends on the choice of the many-body basis set used, i.e., self-consistency is of great relevance. As illustrative examples we consider bosonic systems trapped in one- and two-dimensional symmetric and asymmetric double well potentials. We demonstrate that self-consistency has great impact on the predicted physical properties of the ground and excited states and show that the lack of self-consistency may lead to physically wrong predictions. The convergence of the general MCHB(M) scheme with a growing number M is validated in a specific case of two bosons trapped in a symmetric double well.
The evolution of Bose-Einstein condensates is amply described by the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii mean-field theory which assumes all bosons to reside in a single time-dependent one-particle state throughout the propagation process. In this work, we go beyond mean field and develop an essentially exact many-body theory for the propagation of the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation of N interacting identical bosons. In our theory, the time-dependent many-boson wave function is written as a sum of permanents assembled from orthogonal one-particle functions, or orbitals, where both the expansion coefficients and the permanents (orbitals) themselves are time-dependent and fully determined according to a standard time-dependent variational principle. By employing either the usual Lagrangian formulation or the Dirac-Frenkel variational principle we arrive at two sets of coupled equations of motion, one for the orbitals and one for the expansion coefficients. The first set comprises of first-order differential equations in time and nonlinear integrodifferential equations in position space, whereas the second set consists of first-order differential equations with time-dependent coefficients. We call our theory multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree for bosons, or MCTDHB(M), where M specifies the number of time-dependent orbitals used to construct the permanents. Numerical implementation of the theory is reported and illustrative numerical examples of many-body dynamics of trapped Bose-Einstein condensates are provided and discussed. The convergence of the method with a growing number M of orbitals is demonstrated in a specific example of four interacting bosons in a double well.
We develop an ab initio time-dependent wavefunction based theory for the description of a many-body system of cold interacting bosons. Like the multi-configurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons (MCTDHB), the theory is based on a configurational interaction Ansatz for the many-body wavefunction with time-dependent self-consistent-field orbitals. The theory generalizes the MCTDHB method by incorporating restrictions on the active space of the orbital excitations. The restrictions are specified based on the physical situation at hand. The equations of motion of this time-dependent restricted-active-space self-consistent-field (TD-RASSCF) theory are derived. The similarity between the formal development of the theory for bosons and fermions is discussed. The restrictions on the active space allow the theory to be evaluated under conditions where other wavefunction based methods due to exponential scaling in the numerical effort cannot, and to clearly identify the excitations that are important for an accurate description, significantly beyond the mean-field approach. For ground state calculations we find it to be important to allow a few particles to have the freedom to move in many orbitals, an insight facilitated by the flexibility of the restricted-active-space Ansatz . Moreover, we find that a high accuracy can be obtained by including only even excitations in the many-body self-consistent-field wavefunction. Time-dependent simulations of harmonically trapped bosons subject to a quenching of their noncontact interaction, show failure of the mean-field Gross-Pitaevskii approach within a fraction of a harmonic oscillation period. The TD-RASSCF theory remains accurate at much reduced computational cost compared to the MCTDHB method. Exploring the effect of changes of the restricted-active-space allows us to identify that even self-consistent-field excitations are mainly responsible for the accuracy of the method.
We derive a general linear-response many-body theory capable of computing excitation spectra of trapped interacting bosonic systems, e.g., depleted and fragmented Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs). To obtain the linear-response equations we linearize the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree for bosons (MCTDHB) method, which provides a self-consistent description of many-boson systems in terms of orbitals and a state vector (configurations), and is in principle numerically exact. The derived linear-response many-body theory, which we term LR-MCTDHB, is applicable to systems with interaction potentials of general form. For the special case of a $\ensuremath{\delta}$ interaction potential we show explicitly that the response matrix has a very appealing bilinear form, composed of separate blocks of submatrices originating from contributions of the orbitals, the state vector (configurations), and off-diagonal mixing terms. We further give expressions for the response weights and density response. We introduce the notion of the type of excitations, useful in the study of the physical properties of the equations. From the numerical implementation of the LR-MCTDHB equations and solution of the underlying eigenvalue problem, we obtain excitations beyond available theories of excitation spectra, such as the Bogoliubov--de Gennes (BdG) equations. The derived theory is first applied to study BECs in a one-dimensional harmonic potential. The LR-MCTDHB method contains the BdG excitations and, also, predicts a plethora of additional many-body excitations which are out of the realm of standard linear response. In particular, our theory describes the exact energy of the higher harmonic of the first (dipole) excitation not contained in the BdG theory. We next study a BEC in a very shallow one-dimensional double-well potential. We find with LR-MCTDHB low-lying excitations which are not accounted for by BdG, even though the BEC has only little fragmentation and, hence, the BdG theory is expected to be valid. The convergence of the LR-MCTDHB theory is assessed by systematically comparing the excitation spectra computed at several different levels of theory.
The emphasis of this work is on the computation of physical properties as well as of the wave function of interacting bosons in a trap potential. Many-body perturbation theory is employed to study the leading term of these quantities for finite numbers of bosons, and exact solutions are aimed at in the infinite-particle limit. As discussed before, a suitable starting point is the second-quantized Hamiltonian represented in the basis of destruction and creation operators of its own mean-field potential. This choice leads to expressions for the perturbation terms of all quantities which exhibit a very weak dependence on the particle number. Importantly, when applying ideas similar to Bogoliubov's, the Hamiltonian can be reduced in the infinite-particle limit to a much simplified form which is a priori particle-number conserving. The resulting phonon Hamiltonian is diagonalizable by a linear transformation for which an explicit eigenvalue equation is given. Physical properties can be expressed explicitly by elements of this transformation, and of particular relevance is that the particle-number-conserving wave functions of the original many-boson system can be reconstructed using recursion relations. The reconstruction of the particle-conserving wave function from the phonon Hamiltonian can also be used to assess when the infinite-particle limit is reached in practice for finite trapped condensates. Two applications are discussed in detail. For one of them, an exact solution is known which is found, in the infinite-particle limit, to exactly coincide with that of the phonon Hamiltonian. In both examples expressions for the properties are given in closed form. The physics behind the phonon Hamiltonian and its physical properties is discussed.
We study a system of A identical interacting bosons trapped by an external field by solving ab initio the many-body Schr\"odinger equation. A complete solution by using, for example, the traditional hyperspherical harmonics (HH) basis develops serious practical problems due to the large degeneracy of HH basis. Symmetrization of the wave function, calculation of the matrix elements, etc., become an immensely formidable task as A increases. Instead of the HH basis, here we use a new basis, called ``potential harmonics'' (PH) basis, which is a subset of HH basis. We assume that the contribution to the orbital and grand orbital [in $3(A\ensuremath{-}1)$-dimensional space of the reduced motion] quantum numbers comes only from the interacting pair. This implies inclusion of two-body correlations only and disregard of all higher-body correlations. Such an assumption is ideally suited for the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), which is required, for experimental realization of BEC, to be extremely dilute. Hence three and higher-body collisions are almost totally absent. Unlike the $(3A\ensuremath{-}4)$ hyperspherical variables in HH basis, the PH basis involves only three active variables, corresponding to three quantum numbers---the orbital l, azimuthal m, and the grand orbital 2K+l quantum numbers for any arbitrary A. It drastically reduces the number of coupled equations and calculation of the potential matrix becomes tremendously simplified, as it involves integrals over only three variables for any A. One can easily incorporate realistic atom-atom interactions in a straightforward manner. We study the ground and excited state properties of the condensate for both attractive and repulsive interactions for various particle number. The ground state properties are compared with those calculated from the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. We notice that our many-body results converge towards the mean field results as the particle number increases.
A time-dependent multiconfigurational self-consistent field theory is presented to describe the many-body dynamics of a gas of identical bosonic atoms confined to an external trapping potential at zero temperature from first principles. A set of generalized evolution equations are developed, through the time-dependent variational principle, which account for the complete and self-consistent coupling between the expansion coefficients of each configuration and the underlying one-body wave functions within a restricted two state Fock space basis that includes the full effects of the condensate's mean field as well as atomic correlation. The resulting dynamical equations are a classical Hamiltonian system and, by construction, form a well-defined initial value problem. They are implemented in an efficient numerical algorithm. An example is presented, highlighting the generality of the theory, in which the ballistic expansion of a fragmented condensate ground state is compared to that of a macroscopic quantum superposition state, taken here to be a highly entangled number state, upon releasing the external trapping potential. Strikingly different many-body matter-wave dynamics emerge in each case, accentuating the role of both atomic correlation and mean-field effects in the two condensate states.