Hot Topics in Cold Gases

Since the first experimental realization of Bose-Einstein condensation in cold atomic gases in 1995 there has been a surge of activity in this field. Ingenious experiments have allowed us to probe matter close to zero temperature and reveal some of the fascinating effects quantum mechanics has bestowed on nature. It is a challenge for mathematical physicists to understand these various phenomena from first principles, that is, starting from the underlying many-body Schr\"odinger equation. Recent progress in this direction concerns mainly equilibrium properties of dilute, cold quantum gases. We shall explain some of the results in this article, and describe the mathematics involved in understanding these phenomena. Topics include the ground state energy and the free energy at positive temperature, the effect of interparticle interaction on the critical temperature for Bose-Einstein condensation, as well as the occurrence of superfluidity and quantized vortices in rapidly rotating gases.Comment: Plenary lecture given at the XVI International Congress on Mathematical Physics, Prague, August 3-8, 200

Stability of the 2+2 fermionic system with point interactions

We give a lower bound on the ground state energy of a system of two fermions of one species interacting with two fermions of another species via point interactions. We show that there is a critical mass ratio m_c \approx 0.58 such that the system is stable, i.e., the energy is bounded from below, for m \in [m_c, m_c^{-1}]. So far it was not known whether this 2+2 system exhibits a stable region at all or whether the formation of four-body bound states causes an unbounded spectrum for all mass ratios, similar to the Thomas effect. Our result gives further evidence for the stability of the more general N+M system.Comment: LaTeX, 12 pages; typos corrected, references and 2 figures added; to appear in Math. Phys. Anal. Geo

Triviality of a model of particles with point interactions in the thermodynamic limit

We consider a model of fermions interacting via point interactions, defined via a certain weighted Dirichlet form. While for two particles the interaction corresponds to infinite scattering length, the presence of further particles effectively decreases the interaction strength. We show that the model becomes trivial in the thermodynamic limit, in the sense that the free energy density at any given particle density and temperature agrees with the corresponding expression for non-interacting particles.Comment: LaTeX, 20 pages; final version, to appear in Lett. Math. Phy

Atoms with bosonic "electrons" in strong magnetic fields

We study the ground state properties of an atom with nuclear charge $Z$ and $N$ bosonic ``electrons'' in the presence of a homogeneous magnetic field $B$. We investigate the mean field limit $N\to\infty$ with $N/Z$ fixed, and identify three different asymptotic regions, according to $B\ll Z^2$, $B\sim Z^2$, and $B\gg Z^2$. In Region 1 standard Hartree theory is applicable. Region 3 is described by a one-dimensional functional, which is identical to the so-called Hyper-Strong functional introduced by Lieb, Solovej and Yngvason for atoms with fermionic electrons in the region $B\gg Z^3$; i.e., for very strong magnetic fields the ground state properties of atoms are independent of statistics. For Region 2 we introduce a general {\it magnetic Hartree functional}, which is studied in detail. It is shown that in the special case of an atom it can be restricted to the subspace of zero angular momentum parallel to the magnetic field, which simplifies the theory considerably. The functional reproduces the energy and the one-particle reduced density matrix for the full $N$-particle ground state to leading order in $N$, and it implies the description of the other regions as limiting cases.Comment: LaTeX2e, 37 page

Uniqueness and Non-Degeneracy of Minimizers of the Pekar Functional on a Ball

We consider the Pekar functional on a ball in R^3. We prove uniqueness of minimizers, and a quadratic lower bound in terms of the distance to the minimizer. The latter follows from non-degeneracy of the Hessian at the minimum

Stability of a fermionic N+1N+1 particle system with point interactions

We prove that a system of $N$ fermions interacting with an additional particle via point interactions is stable if the ratio of the mass of the additional particle to the one of the fermions is larger than some critical $m^*$. The value of $m^*$ is independent of $N$ and turns out to be less than $1$. This fact has important implications for the stability of the unitary Fermi gas. We also characterize the domain of the Hamiltonian of this model, and establish the validity of the Tan relations for all wave functions in the domain.Comment: LaTeX, 29 pages, 2 figures; typos corrected, explanations and references added; to appear in Commun. Math. Phy