Correlation inequalities and the thermodynamic limit for classical and quantum continuous systems

We use Ginibre's general formulation of Griffiths' inequalities to derive new correlation inequalities for two-component classical and quantum mechanical systems of distinguishable particles interacting via two body potentials of positive type. As a consequence we obtain existence of the thermodynamic limit of the thermodynamic and correlation functions in the grand canonical ensemble at arbitrary temperatures and chemical potentials. For a large class of systems we show that the limiting correlation functions are clustering. (In a subsequent article these results are extended to the correlation functions of two-component quantum mechanical gases with Bose-Einstein statistics). Finally, a general construction of the thermodynamic limit of the pressure for gases which are not H-stable, above collapse temperature, is presented.Research supported in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation under grant MPS 75-11864A Sloan Foundation Fellow     

Dynamical pair correlations of classical and quantum fluids perturbed with weak long-range forces

We study time dependent correlation functions of ideal classical and quantum gases using methods of equilibrium statistical mechanics. The basis for this is the path integral formalism of quantum mechanical systems. By this approach the statistical mechanics of a quantum mechanical system becomes the equivalent of a classical polymer problem in four dimensions where imaginary time is the fourth dimension. Several non-trivial results for quantum systems have been obtained earlier by this analogy. Here we will focus upon particle dynamics. First ideal gases are considered. Then interactions, that are assumed weak and of long range, are added, and methods of classical statistical mechanics are applied to obtain the leading contribution. Comparison is performed with known results of kinetic theory. These results demonstrate how methods developed for systems in thermal equilibrium also is applicable outside equilibrium. Thus, more generally, we have reason to expect that these methods will be accurate and useful for other situations of interacting many-body systems consisting of quantized particles too. To indicate so we sketch the computation of the induced Casimir force between parallel plates filled with ions for the situation where the ions are quantized, but the interaction remains electrostatic. Further in this respect we establish expressions for a leading correction to ab initio calculations for the energies of the quantized electrons of molecules. To our knowledge these two latter applications go beyond earlier results.     

Asymptotic Completeness in a Class of Massless Relativistic Quantum Field Theories

This paper presents the first examples of massless relativistic quantum field theories which are interacting and asymptotically complete. These two-dimensional theories are obtained by an application of a deformation procedure, introduced recently by Grosse and Lechner, to chiral conformal quantum field theories. The resulting models may not be strictly local, but they contain observables localized in spacelike wedges. It is shown that the scattering theory for waves in two dimensions, due to Buchholz, is still valid under these weaker assumptions. The concepts of interaction and asymptotic completeness, provided by this theory, are adopted in the present investigation.     

Spectral Gap and Exponential Decay of Correlations

We study the relation between the spectral gap above the ground state and the decay of the correlations in the ground state in quantum spin and fermion systems with short-range interactions on a wide class of lattices. We prove that, if two observables anticommute with each other at large distance, then the nonvanishing spectral gap implies exponential decay of the corresponding correlation. When two observables commute with each other at large distance, the connected correlation function decays exponentially under the gap assumption. If the observables behave as a vector under the U(1) rotation of a global symmetry of the system, we use previous results on the large distance decay of the correlation function to show the stronger statement that the correlation function itself, rather than just the connected correlation function, decays exponentially under the gap assumption on a lattice with a certain self-similarity in (fractal) dimensions D < 2. In particular, if the system is translationally invariant in one of the spatial directions, then this self-similarity condition is automatically satisfied. We also treat systems with long-range, power-law decaying interactions.     

Quantum statistical physics: A new approach

The new scheme employed (throughout the “thermodynamic phase space”), in the statistical thermodynamic investigation of classical systems, is extended to quantum systems. Quantum Nearest Neighbor Probability Density Functions (QNNPDF's) are formulated (in a manner analogous to the classical case) to provide a new quantum approach for describing structure at the microscopic level, as well as characterize the thermodynamic properties of material systems. Since QNNPDF's describe microstructure in “random neighborhoods”, the new scheme may be viewed as an “elastic cavity” approach (with “elastic” walls). A major point of this paper is that it relates the free energy of an assembly of interacting particles to QNNPDF's. Application to the simple case of dilute, weakly degenerate gases has been outlined.     

Bosonic superfluid-insulator transition in continuous space

We investigate the zero-temperature phase diagram of interacting Bose gases in the presence of a simple cubic optical lattice, going beyond the regime where the mapping to the single-band Bose-Hubbard model is reliable. Our computational approach is a new hybrid quantum Monte?Carlo method which combines algorithms used to simulate homogeneous quantum fluids in continuous space with those used for discrete lattice models of strongly correlated systems. We determine the critical interaction strength and optical lattice intensity where the superfluid-to-insulator transition takes place, considering also the regime of shallow optical lattices and strong interatomic interactions. The implications of our findings for the supersolid state of matter are discussed.     

Classical Properties of Infinite Quantum Open Systems

Long time asymptotic properties of a class of environmentally induced dynamical semigroups on arbitrary von Neumann algebras are discussed. Such a semigroup selects observables, called effective observables, which are immune to the process of decoherence and so evolve in a reversible automorphic way. In particular, it is shown that effective observables of the quantum system in the thermodynamic limit, subjected to a specific interaction with another quantum system, obey classical dynamics.This work was supported by the KBN research grant no 5P03B 081 21     

On the exact mean-field description of continuous quantum systems in equilibrium

The thermodynamic limit of free energy density is investigated for quantum systems of n particles obeying Boltzmann, Fermi and Bose statistics, interacting via spin-independent 2-body bounded separable potentials and confined to a bounded region Λ ? R^v. The technique used exploits the Feynman-Kac theorem in finite volume and the saddle-point method of Tindemans and Capel. It is shown that the limiting free energy density of such systems is equal to that of a system of noninteracting particles subject to a mean field which is equal to the averaged 2-body interaction. The equations for the mean field of n particles obeying Boltzmann, Fermi or Bose statistics represent self-consistent field problems and their forms comply with the well-known theorems on mean occupation numbers of single-particle eigenstates of ideal quantum gases at inverse temperature β.     

Equilibration of Small and Large Subsystems in Field Theories and Matrix Models

Integrable quantum field theories in 1+1 dimensions have recently become amenable to a rigorous construction, but many questions about the structure of their local observables remain open. Our goal is to characterize these local observables in terms of their expansion coefficients in a series expansion by interacting annihilators and creators, similar to form factors. We establish a rigorous one-to-one characterization, where locality of an observable is reflected in analyticity properties of its expansion coefficients; this includes detailed information about the high-energy behaviour of the observable and the growth properties of the analytic functions. Our results hold for generic observables, not only smeared pointlike fields, and the characterizing conditions depend only on the localization region—we consider wedges and double cones—and on the permissible high energy behaviour.     

Distant measurement

Distant correlations are investigated within the framework of quantum mechanics. They are inherent to any physical situation in which two separated quantal systems are described by one composite state vector. Owing to correlations of this kind one can perform a measurement on one of the systems, thereby measuring a certain observable on the other (distant) system without interacting with it. Necessary and sufficient conditions are given for such a distant measurement to take place. It is found which are the observables that can be measured distantly, and which are the states of the distant system obtainable in this way. Solution of these problems is achieved by replacing the composite state vector by two entities equivalent to it: the reduced statistical operator of the system which is directly measured and a correlation operator. The latter gives a connection between states, observables, and probabilities of the two systems. Experimental evidence for distant measurement is discussed.     

Separability,gauge invariance and nonsuperluminality in direct interaction dynamics

We discuss the classical mechanics of relativistic systems with direct interaction. We show that various desiderata can all be accommodated in the single time approach by restricting the observables to the gauge invariant variables. We show how such observables can be constructed in general. We explicitly construct position observables in a general system and show that they lead to separable, invariant world lines. Nonsuperluminality is explicitly demonstrated for two body systems interacting via central forces of semibounded magnitude provided they ensure timelike canonical momenta. For two particles, our results reproduce the usual solution in covariant equal-time gauge.     

Perturbations of unitary representations of finite dimensional Lie groups

In quantum physical theories, interactions in a system of particles are commonly understood as perturbations to certain observables, including the Hamiltonian, of the corresponding interaction-free system. The manner in which observables undergo perturbations is subject to constraints imposed by the overall symmetries that the interacting system is expected to obey. Primary among these are the spacetime symmetries encoded by the unitary representations of the Galilei group and Poincaré group for the non-relativistic and relativistic systems, respectively. In this light, interactions can be more generally viewed as perturbations to unitary representations of connected Lie groups, including the non-compact groups of spacetime symmetry transformations. In this paper, we present a simple systematic procedure for introducing perturbations to (infinite dimensional) unitary representations of finite dimensional connected Lie groups. We discuss applications to relativistic and non-relativistic particle systems.     

Spin squeezing in Bose—Einstein condensates: Limits imposed by decoherence and non-zero temperature

We consider dynamically generated spin squeezing in interacting bimodal condensates. We show that particle losses and non-zero temperature effects in a multimode theory completely change the scaling of the best squeezing for large atom numbers. We present the new scalings and we give approximate analytical expressions for the squeezing in the thermodynamic limit. Besides reviewing our recent theoretical results, we give here a simple physical picture of how decoherence acts to limit the squeezing. We show in particular that under certain conditions the decoherence due to losses and non-zero temperature acts as a simple dephasing.     

Microcanonical Finite-Size Scaling

In the microcanonical ensemble, suitably defined observables show nonanalyticities and power-law behavior even for finite systems. For these observables, a microcanonical finite-size scaling theory is established and combined with the experimentally observed power-law behavior. Scaling laws are obtained which relate exponents of the finite system and critical exponents of the infinite system to the system-size dependence of the affiliated microcanonical observables.     

The quantum pressure correction to the excitation spectrum of the trapped superfluid Fermi gases in a BEC-BCS crossover

Using quantum hydrodynamic approaches, we study the quantum pressure correction to the collective excitation spectrum of the interacting trapped superfluid Fermi gases in the BEC-BCS crossover. Based on a phenomenological equation of state, we derive hydrodynamic equations of the system in the whole BEC-BCS crossover regime. Beyond the Thomas--Fermi approximation, expressions of the frequency corrections of collective modes for both spherical and axial symmetric traps excited in the BEC-BCS crossover are given explicitly. The corrections of the eigenfrequencies due to the quantum pressure and their dependence on the inverse interaction strength, anisotropic parameter and particle numbers of the condensate are discussed in detail.     

Quantum thermodynamics of nonequilibrium. Onsager reciprocity and dispersion-dissipation relations

A generalized Onsager reciprocity theorem emerges as an exact consequence of the structure of the nonlinear equation of motion of quantum thermodynamics and is valid for all the dissipative nonequilibrium states, close and far from stable thermodynamic equilibrium, of an isolated system composed of a single constituent of matter with a finite-dimensional Hilbert space. In addition, a dispersion-dissipation theorem results in a precise relation between the generalized dissipative conductivity that describes the mutual interrelation between dissipative rates of a pair of observables and the codispersions of the same observables and the generators of the motion. These results are presented together with a review of quantum thermodynamic postulates and general results.