Density oscillations of confined one-dimensional Fermi gases of contact repulsive interactions in a continuous space are discussed within Bethe-ansatz-based spin-density-functional theory. The results are compared against the exact analytical and the exact diagonalization method. For an unpolarized system, the number of peaks in the density profiles is doubled, signaling the crossover of the
2kF-Friedel to
4kF-Wigner oscillations (with
kF being the Fermi wave vector). For both unpolarized and polarized systems, a threshold of the short-range interaction strength can be found where
Nf-peak Wigner oscillations of a
4kF wave vector appear in the density profile (
Nf is the total particle number).
Density functional theory provides the basis for uncounted studies of ground-state properties of many-body systems. However, the connection between the energy density functional and the underlying microscopic interactions of a given theory is not fully understood. In this thesis we use renormalization-group techniques in combination with density functional theory to study many-body systems from microscopic interactions. We apply our formalism to different one-dimensional systems. We start with systems of identical fermions interacting via a short-range repulsive and long-range attractive interaction which serves as a simple one-dimensional toy model for nuclei. After that we study systems of spin-1/2 fermions, where we assume interactions only between fermions with different spins and consider both a non-local interaction as in the previous case and a contact interaction. In particular, the contact interaction plays a prominent role for ultracold Fermi gases. We calculate ground-state properties such as the energy, density, intrinsic density and density correlation functions and compare our results to values obtained from other approaches. Moreover, we show how energies of excited states and the absolute square of the ground-state wavefunction can be extracted from the density-density correlation function. The relation between our formalism and conventional density functional theory as well as many-body perturbation theory is discussed which may help to guide the development of ab initio functionals for quantitative studies of nuclei in the future.
We develop and apply meanfield methods to two systems of significant interest in cold atom physics. The first system, and the main subject of this thesis, is a gas of polarized dipoles, in which the particles have a long range anisotropic interaction. The second system is a toroidally trapped gas that interacts via short range interactions. \n \nDipolar gases: We develop accurate techniques for dipolar Bose and Fermi gases accounting for both direct and exchange interactions. We detail an efficient numerical implementation of the meanfield treatment. \n \nWe study the thermodynamic and the first and second order correlation properties of the system. We find that exchange interactions cause the correlation functions to be anisotropic in the low temperature regime. We also find that many uniform gas thermodynamic predictions, for which direct interaction effects vanish, are qualitatively unreliable for trapped systems, most notably for oblate traps. \n \nUsing Hartree-Fock theory and analytic approximations, we examine the magnetostrictive position and momentum space distortions that occur in harmonically confined dipolar Bose and Fermi gases. The Bose gas momentum distribution distorts in the opposite sense to that of the Fermi gas. By relating exchange effects to short range correlations between the particles we discuss the energetic origin of this difference. \n \nIntroducing local momentum distortion fields, we develop a practical Hartree-Fock theory in which exchange effects are described by a local effective potential. This theory is applicable at zero and finite temperature, and is in excellent agreement with full Hartree-Fock calculations. \n \nContact gases: We show how considerable simplification of numerical results and analytical derivations can be achieved in the local density approximation using a variety of density of states techniques. \n \nWe examine the process of isentropic loading of a Bose or Fermi gas from a harmonic trap into the scale invariant toroidal regime that exhibits a high degree of system invariance when increasing the radius of the toroid. For bosons a regime of cooling is identified and we find that the Fermi gas is subjected to irreducible heating during loading, caused by the loss of one degree of freedom for thermalization.