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arXiv:cond-mat/0703163 · Physical Review A

Quantum versus classical statistical dynamics of an ultracold Bose gas

Jürgen Berges, Thomas Gasenzer

Published Sep 11, 2007• 98 citations
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Abstract

We investigate the conditions under which quantum fluctuations are relevant for the quantitative interpretation of experiments with ultracold Bose gases. This requires to go beyond the description in terms of the Gross-Pitaevskii and Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov mean-field theories, which can be obtained as classical (statistical) field-theory approximations of the quantum many-body problem. We employ functional-integral techniques based on the two-particle irreducible (2PI) effective action. The role of quantum fluctuations is studied within the nonperturbative 2PI $1∕\mathcal{N}$ expansion to next-to-leading order. At this accuracy level memory integrals enter the dynamic equations, which differ for quantum and classical statistical descriptions. This can be used to obtain a classicality condition for the many-body dynamics. We exemplify this condition by studying the nonequilibrium evolution of a one-dimensional Bose gas of sodium atoms, and discuss some distinctive properties of quantum versus classical statistical dynamics.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.76.033604

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We investigate the conditions under which quantum fluctuations are relevant for the quantitative interpretation of experiments with ultracold Bose gases. This requires to go beyond the description in terms of the Gross-Pitaevskii and Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov mean-field theories, which can be obtained as classical (statistical) field-theory approximations of the quantum many-body problem. We employ functional-integral techniques based on the two-particle irreducible (2PI) effective action. The role of quantum fluctuations is studied within the nonperturbative 2PI 1∕N1∕\mathcal{N}1∕N expansion to next-to-leading order. At this accuracy level memory integrals enter the dynamic equations, which differ for quantum and classical statistical descriptions. This can be used to obtain a classicality condition for the many-body dynamics. We exemplify this condition by studying the nonequilibrium evolution of a one-dimensional Bose gas of sodium atoms, and discuss some distinctive properties of quantum versus classical statistical dynamics.
The far-from-equilibrium dynamics of an ultracold, one-dimensional Bose gas is studied. The focus is set on the comparison between the solutions of fully dynamical evolution equations derived from the two-particle irreducible (2PI) effective action and their corresponding kinetic approximation in the form of Boltzmann-type transport equations. It is shown that during the time evolution of the gas a kinetic description which includes non-Markovian memory effects in a gradient expansion becomes valid. The timescale at which this occurs is shown to exceed significantly the timescale at which the system's evolution enters a near-equilibrium drift period where a fluctuation–dissipation relation is found to hold and which would seem to be predestined for the kinetic approximation.
A dynamical many-body theory is presented which systematically extends beyond mean-field and perturbative quantum-field theoretical procedures. It allows us to study the dynamics of strongly interacting quantum-degenerate atomic gases. The nonperturbative approximation scheme is based on a systematic expansion of the two-particle irreducible effective action in powers of the inverse number of field components. This yields dynamic equations which contain direct scattering, memory, and ``off-shell'' effects that are not captured by the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. This is relevant to account for the dynamics of, e.g., strongly interacting quantum gases atoms near a scattering resonance, or of one-dimensional Bose gases in the Tonks-Girardeau regime. We apply the theory to a homogeneous ultracold Bose gas in one spatial dimension. Considering the time evolution of an initial state far from equilibrium we show that it quickly evolves to a nonequilibrium quasistationary state and discuss the possibility to attribute an effective temperature to it. The approach to thermal equilibrium is found to be extremely slow.
We review phase-space techniques based on the Wigner representation that provide an approximate description of dilute ultra-cold Bose gases. In this approach the quantum field evolution can be represented using equations of motion of a similar form to the Gross–Pitaevskii equation but with stochastic modifications that include quantum effects in a controlled degree of approximation. These techniques provide a practical quantitative description of both equilibrium and dynamical properties of Bose gas systems. We develop versions of the formalism appropriate at zero temperature, where quantum fluctuations can be important, and at finite temperature where thermal fluctuations dominate. The numerical techniques necessary for implementing the formalism are discussed in detail, together with methods for extracting observables of interest. Numerous applications to a wide range of phenomena are presented.
We study various properties of an ultracold two-dimensional (2D) Bose gas that are beyond a mean-field description. We first derive the effective interaction for such a system as realized in current experiments, which requires the use of an energy dependent TTT matrix. Using this result, we then solve the mean-field equation of state of the modified Popov theory, and compare it with the usual Hartree-Fock theory. We show that even though the former theory does not suffer from infrared divergences in both the normal and superfluid phases, there is an unphysical density discontinuity close to the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition. We then improve upon the mean-field description by using a renormalization group approach and show how the density discontinuity is resolved. The flow equations in two dimensions, in particular, of the symmetry-broken phase, already contain some unique features pertinent to the 2D XYXYXY model, even though vortices have not been included explicitly. We also compute various many-body correlators, and show that correlation effects beyond the Hartree-Fock theory are important already in the normal phase as criticality is approached. We finally extend our results to the inhomogeneous case of a trapped Bose gas using the local-density approximation and show that close to criticality, the renormalization group approach is required for the accurate determination of the density profile.
We extend our earlier work on the nonequilibrium dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate initially loaded into a one-dimensional optical lattice. From the two-particle-irreducible (2PI) closed-time-path (CTP) effective action for the Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian we derive causal equations of motion that treat mean-field effects and quantum fluctuations on an equal footing. We demonstrate that these equations reproduce well-known limits when simplifying approximations are introduced. For example, when the system dynamics admits two-time separation, we obtain the Kadanoff-Baym equations of quantum kinetic theory, and in the weakly interacting limit, we show that the local equilibrium solutions of our equations reproduce the second-order corrections to the self-energy of the type originally derived by Beliaev. The derivation of quantum kinetic equations from the 2PI-CTP effective action not only checks the viability of the formalism but also shows it to be a tractable framework for going beyond standard Boltzmann equations of motion.