The Ground State Energy of a Dilute Two-dimensional Bose Gas

The ground state energy per particle of a dilute, homogeneous, two-dimensional Bose gas, in the thermodynamic limit is shown rigorously to be $E_0/N = (2\pi \hbar^2\rho /m){|\ln (\rho a^2)|^{-1}}$, to leading order, with a relative error at most ${\rm O} (|\ln (\rho a^2)|^{-1/5})$. Here $N$ is the number of particles, $\rho =N/V$ is the particle density and $a$ is the scattering length of the two-body potential. We assume that the two-body potential is short range and nonnegative. The amusing feature of this result is that, in contrast to the three-dimensional case, the energy, $E_0$ is not simply $N(N-1)/2$ times the energy of two particles in a large box of volume (area, really) $V$. It is much larger

Entropy Meters and the Entropy of Non-extensive Systems

In our derivation of the second law of thermodynamics from the relation of adiabatic accessibility of equilibrium states we stressed the importance of being able to scale a system's size without changing its intrinsic properties. This leaves open the question of defining the entropy of macroscopic, but unscalable systems, such as gravitating bodies or systems where surface effects are important. We show here how the problem can be overcome, in principle, with the aid of an `entropy meter'. An entropy meter can also be used to determine entropy functions for non-equilibrium states and mesoscopic systems.Comment: Comments and references added to the Introduction. To be published in the Proceedings of The Royal Society

One-Dimensional Behavior of Dilute, Trapped Bose Gases

Recent experimental and theoretical work has shown that there are conditions in which a trapped, low-density Bose gas behaves like the one-dimensional delta-function Bose gas solved years ago by Lieb and Liniger. This is an intrinsically quantum-mechanical phenomenon because it is not necessary to have a trap width that is the size of an atom -- as might have been supposed -- but it suffices merely to have a trap width such that the energy gap for motion in the transverse direction is large compared to the energy associated with the motion along the trap. Up to now the theoretical arguments have been based on variational - perturbative ideas or numerical investigations. In contrast, this paper gives a rigorous proof of the one-dimensional behavior as far as the ground state energy and particle density are concerned. There are four parameters involved: the particle number, $N$, transverse and longitudinal dimensions of the trap, $r$ and $L$, and the scattering length $a$ of the interaction potential. Our main result is that if $r/L\to 0$ and $N\to\infty$ the ground state energy and density can be obtained by minimizing a one-dimensional density functional involving the Lieb-Liniger energy density with coupling constant $\sim a/r^2$.Comment: LaTeX2e, 49 pages. Typos corrected, some explanatory text added. To appear in Commun. Math. Phy