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The Lee-Huang-Yang Formula in the Hard-Core Simplified Approach to the Bose gas

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Abstract

We study the hard-core variant of the Simplified Approach to the ground state of the dilute Bose gas. The hard-core potential has been the subject of renewed attention, and is physically relevant to realistic atomic Bose gases. The hard-core Simple Equation is an integro-differential equation, and we construct its solution via a monotone iteration scheme and prove existence and uniqueness (in a restricted sense) of the solution. The energy per particle ee and the density ρρ of the solution are shown to satisfy the Lee-Huang-Yang formula e=2πρ(1+12815πρ+o(ρ))e = 2πρ(1 + \frac{128}{15\sqrtπ}\sqrtρ + o(\sqrtρ)) as ρ→0ρ\to 0, and the condensate fraction ηη predicted by the hard-core Simple Equation is shown to satisfy η=1−83πρ+o(ρ)η= 1 - \frac{8}{3\sqrtπ}\sqrtρ + o(\sqrtρ) as ρ→0ρ\to 0, in agreement with Bogolyubov's theory. We thus extend results of Carlen, Jauslin, Lieb to the hard-core case. The hard-core equation is defined on its own terms, and the proofs proceed by approximating the hard-core potential with the soft-core potentials m χ{∣x∣≤1}m\,χ_{\{|x| \le 1\}} of increasing height mm: at fixed energy, we establish the L1L^1 convergence of the corresponding solutions and the convergence of their densities at an O(m−1/2)O(m^{-1/2}) rate, and we show that the Lee-Huang-Yang expansions of the energy and of the condensate fraction for the soft-core equations hold with errors uniform in mm, so that they survive the hard-core limit.

Introduction

It has long been known that the Bose gas condenses below a critical temperature [10, 15] as was verified experimentally by [1, 14] in extremely low density samples of rubidium and sodium. Despite phenomenological theories that were developed by Bogolyubov, Gross, Pitaevskii, Landau and others [19, 29, 8, 22] in the low-density regime, a proof of Bose-Einstein condensation from first principles in interacting Bose gases is lacking (very recently, in a release of machine-generated manuscripts [28], a proof of Bose–Einstein condensation for the dilute hard-sphere Bose gas in the thermodynamic limit has been announced; this result is still under review, and is yet to be published in a scientific journal). Proving many other properties of interacting Bose gases including super-fluidity remains an open problem.

Over the past three decades, starting with Lieb and Yngvason’s study of its ground state energy [26, 27], mathematical physicists have worked towards filling these gaps. There have been many successes both in the Gross-Pitaevskii regime [25, 7] and the mean-field regime [31], and in the thermodynamic limit [32, 16, 17, 6, 5]. Lately there has been renewed interest in studying the hard-core Bose gas [26, 17, 5, 6]. This is for two reasons. Firstly, it is a mathematical challenge due to the infinite gradient of the potential and secondly realistic potentials for bosonic atoms such as the Aziz potential [2] or the HFDHE2 potential [9] include a strongly repulsive singularity at the origin which is well approximated by a hard-core.

Most of the results that have been obtained in the thermodynamic limit concern the ground-state energy [32, 16, 17, 5, 6] and free energy [4, 18, 30, 33, 20]. However a description of other observables of Bose gases, such as the condensate fraction, still remains lacking [27].

In 1963, Lieb introduced an effective equation for the ground state properties of the interacting Bose gas in the thermodynamic limit, known as the Simplified Approach [24]. In a recent sequence of papers [11, 12, 13, 21], the Simplified Approach has been shown to be surprisingly accurate. In particular, its prediction for the ground-state energy asymptotically matches that for the Bose gas both at low and high densities [11]. In addition, its predictions for the condensate fraction, the momentum distribution and the 2-point correlation function agree with Bogolyubov’s theory at low densities [12]. Furthermore, numerical studies showed the ground-state energy prediction of the Simplified Approach is quantitatively accurate when compared with Monte-Carlo simulations at all densities as well as the qualitative behavior of the condensate fraction [13].

The existing results of the Simplified Approach have been established for integrable soft-core potentials. In this note, we develop a theory for the Simplified Approach with a hard-core potential. We prove that the ground-state energy with a hard-core potential agrees asymptotically with the many-body Bose gas at low densities (up to Lee-Huang-Yang [LHY] order; see (3)). In addition, we show that the condensate fraction is in agreement with Bogolyubov’s theory.

The derivation of the Simplified Approach from the many-body Bose gas is non-rigorous and relies on a truncation of a hierarchy of correlation functions in terms of the 2-point correlation function g(x)g(x) [24, 21]. This approximation leads to a collection of equations of varying difficulties of complexity and accuracy. On one side of the spectrum the Complete Equation was numerically verified to be accurate as mentioned previously but is exceedingly difficult to study analytically [13]. On the other end of the spectrum is the Simple Equation which is only accurate at high and low densities, but is simple enough to be studied analytically. In this note, we will prove properties of the Simple Equation with a hard-core potential at low densities (since there is a critical packing fraction the high-density regime is inaccessible). For a numerical analysis of the solutions see [13].

Definition 1 (Simple Equation). The Simple Equation of the ground-state Bose gas in R3\mathbb{R}^{3} with a non-negative radially-symmetric potential, v(x)∈L1(R3)∩Lp(R3)v(x) \in L^{1}(\mathbb{R}^{3}) \cap L^{p}(\mathbb{R}^{3}) with p>32p > \frac{3}{2}

is

(−Δ+4e+v(∣x∣))u(∣x∣)=v(∣x∣)+2eρ u∗u(∣x∣)(1)\left(-\Delta+ 4e + v(|x|)\right)u(|x|) = v(|x|) + 2e\rho\, u * u(|x|) \tag*{(1)}
e=ρ2∫(1−u(∣x∣))v(∣x∣) dx(2)e = \frac{\rho}{2}\int(1-u(|x|))v(|x|)\,dx \tag*{(2)}

where uu is an integrable and radially-symmetric function. ee is the prediction for the ground state energy per particle.

[11] proved the existence of a solution satisfying 0≤u≤10 \le u \le1 and tied the relationship between the density and energy (given via the second equation in (1)) to the integrability and uniqueness of the solution.

In addition, the energy-per-particle, ee, of the solution was also found to agree with the seminal Lee-Huang-Yang conjecture at low density in 3 dimensions:

e=2πρa[1+12815πρa3+o(ρa3)](3)e = 2\pi\rho a\left[1+\frac{128}{15\sqrt{\pi}}\sqrt{\rho a^3}+o(\sqrt{\rho a^3})\right] \tag*{(3)}

where aa is the scattering length of the corresponding 2-body problem with potential vv. The LHY formula was recently proved for the soft-core many-body Bose gases by [32, 16, 3].

To introduce the hard-core Simple Equation, we note that (1) is equivalent to

(−Δ+4e+v(∣x∣))u(∣x∣)=v(∣x∣)+2eρ u∗u(∣x∣),(4)\left(-\Delta+ 4e + v(|x|)\right)u(|x|) = v(|x|) + 2e\rho\,u * u(|x|), \tag*{(4)}
∫u=1ρ(5)\int u = \frac{1}{\rho} \tag*{(5)}

Indeed, when the potential is integrable, integration of the first equation of (1) yields

2eρ(∫u)2−4e∫u+∫[1−u]v=0(6)2e\rho\left(\int u\right)^2 - 4e\int u + \int[1-u]v = 0 \tag*{(6)}

which implies that

e=ρ2∫(1−u)v⟺∫u=1ρ.(7)e = \frac{\rho}{2}\int(1-u)v \Longleftrightarrow\int u = \frac{1}{\rho}. \tag*{(7)}

This re-formulation naturally suggests the generalization of the definition of the Simple Equation to the hard-core potential: since the wave-function vanishes inside the hard core we impose 1−τ(x)=01-\tau(x)=0 for ∣x∣≤1|x|\le1:

Definition 2 (Hard-Core Simple Equation).

Δτ(∣x∣)=4eτ(∣x∣)−2eρhcτ∗τ(∣x∣),∣x∣>1,(8)\Delta\tau(|x|) = 4e\tau(|x|) - 2e\rho_{\mathrm{hc}}\tau* \tau(|x|), \qquad|x|>1, \tag*{(8)}
τ(∣x∣)=1,∣x∣≤1,(9)\tau(|x|) = 1, \qquad|x|\le1, \tag*{(9)}
∫τ=1ρhc.(10)\int\tau= \frac{1}{\rho_{\mathrm{hc}}}. \tag*{(10)}

We can recover a formula for the ground state energy from (10) by integrating (8) over {∣x∣>1}\{|x|>1\}:

e=8π3eρhc−2πρhc∂rτ∣1+−eρhc2∫B1(0)τ∗τ,(11)e = \frac{8\pi}{3}e\rho_{\mathrm{hc}} - 2\pi\rho_{\mathrm{hc}}\partial_r\tau\big|_{1+} - e\rho_{\mathrm{hc}}^2\int_{B_1(0)}\tau* \tau, \tag*{(11)}

where B1(0)B_1(0) is the unit ball centered at the origin, 4π3=∣B1(0)∣\frac{4\pi}{3}=|B_1(0)| is its volume, and 4π4\pi is the area of the unit sphere. From (11), we get

e=−2πρhc∂rτ∣1+1−8π3ρhc+ρhc2∫B1(0)τ∗τ(12)e=\frac{-2\pi\rho_{\mathrm{hc}}\partial_r\tau\big|_{1+}}{1-\frac{8\pi}{3}\rho_{\mathrm{hc}}+\rho_{\mathrm{hc}}^2\int_{B_1(0)}\tau*\tau} \tag*{(12)}

Our first main result is the following.

Theorem 1 (LHY Formula). The hard-core Simple Equation (8) has a unique integrable solution 0≤τ≤10\leq\tau\leq1 and, as ρhc→0\rho_{\mathrm{hc}}\to0

e=2πρhca0(1+12815πρhca03+o(ρhca03))(13)e=2\pi\rho_{\mathrm{hc}}a_0\left(1+\frac{128}{15\sqrt{\pi}}\sqrt{\rho_{\mathrm{hc}}a_0^3}+o\left(\sqrt{\rho_{\mathrm{hc}}a_0^3}\right)\right) \tag*{(13)}

where a0=1a_0=1 is the scattering length of the hard-sphere potential.

In other words we recover the LHY formula (3) for the hard-core Simple Equation. The LHY formula was proved for the hard-core many-body Bose gas by [17, 5, 6] and thus we show that the energy of the hard-core Simple Equation is asymptotically accurate in the low density limit.

Condensate Fraction

The Simplified Approach also makes predictions about quantities other than the ground state energy [12, 21]; here we focus on the condensate fraction. Denote by PjP_j the projector of the jj-th particle onto the condensate state, which is the constant state:

Pjψ(x1,…,xN)=∫dxjVψ(x1,…,xN),(14)P_j\psi(x_1,\ldots,x_N)=\int\frac{dx_j}{V}\psi(x_1,\ldots,x_N), \tag*{(14)}

so that 1N∑j=1NPj\frac{1}{N}\sum_{j=1}^{N}P_j is the observable for the occupation fraction of the Bose-Einstein condensate. Its prediction is obtained using the Hellmann-Feynman trick: we modify the many-body Hamiltonian as

HN,μ:=−12∑i=1NΔi+∑i<jv(∣xi−xj∣)−μN∑j=1NPj(15)\mathcal{H}_{N,\mu}:=-\frac{1}{2}\sum_{i=1}^{N}\Delta_i+\sum_{i<j}v(|x_i-x_j|)-\frac{\mu}{N}\sum_{j=1}^{N}P_j \tag*{(15)}

and, denoting its ground state by ψ0,μ\psi_{0,\mu} and its ground state energy by E0,μ\mathcal{E}_{0,\mu}, we have

⟨ψ0,μ,1N∑j=1NPjψ0,μ⟩=−∂μE0,μ∣μ=0.(16)\left\langle\psi_{0,\mu},\frac{1}{N}\sum_{j=1}^{N}P_j\psi_{0,\mu}\right\rangle=-\left.\partial_\mu\mathcal{E}_{0,\mu}\right|_{\mu=0}. \tag*{(16)}

The prediction of the Simplified Approach for the condensate fraction is obtained by deriving the Simplified Approach from the modified Hamiltonian (15) (following the same prescription as described above), computing the prediction for its ground state energy eμe_\mu, and differentiating with respect to μ\mu. Since PjP_j is a one-particle operator, this can be done in a straightforward way [12 (1.15)]: the perturbation enters the Simple Equation only through the constant shift −Δ↦−Δ+2μ-\Delta\mapsto-\Delta+2\mu, which yields the modified Simple Equation

(−Δ+2μ+4eμ+v(∣x∣))uμ(∣x∣)=v(∣x∣)+2eμρuμ∗uμ(∣x∣),(17)(-\Delta+2\mu+4e_\mu+v(|x|))u_\mu(|x|)=v(|x|)+2e_\mu\rho u_\mu*u_\mu(|x|), \tag*{(17)}
eμ=ρ2∫(1−uμ(∣x∣))v(∣x∣) dx(18)e_\mu=\frac{\rho}{2}\int(1-u_\mu(|x|))v(|x|)\,dx \tag*{(18)}

The modified hard-core Simple Equation is obtained analogously:

Δτμ(∣x∣)=(4eμ+2μ)τμ(∣x∣)−2eμρhcτμ∗τμ(∣x∣)∣x∣>1(19)\Delta\tau_\mu(|x|) = (4e_\mu+ 2\mu)\tau_\mu(|x|) - 2e_\mu\rho_{\mathrm{hc}} \tau_\mu* \tau_\mu(|x|) \qquad|x| > 1 \tag*{(19)}
τμ(∣x∣)=1∣x∣≤1(20)\tau_\mu(|x|) = 1 \qquad|x| \le1 \tag*{(20)}
∫τμ=1ρhc(21)\int\tau_\mu= \frac{1}{\rho_{\mathrm{hc}}} \tag*{(21)}

This yields a prediction for the condensate fraction:

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