Search Results
A variational formula for the free energy of an interacting many-particle system
2010, Adams, Stefan, Collevecchio, Andrea, König, Wolfgang
We consider $N$ bosons in a box in $R^d$ with volume $N/rho$ under the influence of a mutually repellent pair potential. The particle density $rhoin(0,infty)$ is kept fixed. Our main result is the identification of the limiting free energy, $f(beta,rho)$, at positive temperature $1/beta$, in terms of an explicit variational formula, for any fixed $rho$ if $beta$ is sufficiently small, and for any fixed $beta$ if $rho$ is sufficiently small. The thermodynamic equilibrium is described by the symmetrised trace of $rm e^-beta Hcal_N$, where $Hcal_N$ denotes the corresponding Hamilton operator. The well-known Feynman-Kac formula reformulates this trace in terms of $N$ interacting Brownian bridges. Due to the symmetrisation, the bridges are organised in an ensemble of cycles of various lengths. The novelty of our approach is a description in terms of a marked Poisson point process whose marks are the cycles. This allows for an asymptotic analysis of the system via a large-deviations analysis of the stationary empirical field. The resulting variational formula ranges over random shift-invariant marked point fields and optimizes the sum of the interaction and the relative entropy with respect to the reference process. In our proof of the lower bound for the free energy, we drop all interaction involving lq infinitely longrq cycles, and their possible presence is signalled by a loss of mass of the lq finitely longrq cycles in the variational formula. In the proof of the upper bound, we only keep the mass on the lq finitely longrq cycles. We expect that the precise relationship between these two bounds lies at the heart of Bose-Einstein condensation and intend to analyse it further in future.
The free energy of a box-version of the interacting Bose gas
2022, Collin, Orphée, Jahnel, Benedikt, König, Wolfgang
The interacting quantum Bose gas is a random ensemble of many Brownian bridges (cycles) of various lengths with interactions between any pair of legs of the cycles. It is one of the standard mathematical models in which a proof for the famous Bose--Einstein condensation phase transition is sought for. We introduce a simplified version of the model with an organisation of the particles in deterministic boxes instead of Brownian cycles as the marks of a reference Poisson point process (for simplicity, in Z d, instead of R d). We derive an explicit and interpretable variational formula in the thermodynamic limit for the limiting free energy of the canonical ensemble for any value of the particle density. This formula features all relevant physical quantities of the model, like the microscopic and the macroscopic particle densities, together with their mutual and self-energies and their entropies. The proof method comprises a two-step large-deviation approach for marked Poisson point processes and an explicit distinction into small and large marks. In the characteristic formula, each of the microscopic particles and the statistics of the macroscopic part of the configuration are seen explicitly; the latter receives the interpretation of the condensate. The formula enables us to prove a number of properties of the limiting free energy as a function of the particle density, like differentiability and explicit upper and lower bounds, and a qualitative picture below and above the critical threshold (if it is finite). This proves a modified saturation nature of the phase transition. However, we have not yet succeeded in proving the existence of this phase transition.