Shiva diagrams for composite-boson many-body effects: how they work

The purpose of this paper is to show how the diagrammatic expansion in fermion exchanges of scalar products of N-composite-boson (“coboson”) states can be obtained in a practical way. The hard algebra on which this expansion is based, will be given in an independent publication. Due to the composite nature of the particles, the scalar products of N-coboson states do not reduce to a set of Kronecker symbols, as for elementary bosons, but contain subtle exchange terms between two or more cobosons. These terms originate from Pauli exclusion between the fermionic components of the particles. While our many-body theory for composite bosons leads to write these scalar products as complicated sums of products of “Pauli scatterings” between two cobosons, they in fact correspond to fermion exchanges between any number P of quantum particles, with 2 ≤P≤N. These P-body exchanges are nicely represented by the so-called “Shiva diagrams”, which are topologically different from Feynman diagrams, due to the intrinsic many-body nature of the Pauli exclusion from which they originate. These Shiva diagrams in fact constitute the novel part of our composite-exciton many-body theory which was up to now missing to get its full diagrammatic representation. Using them, we can now “see” through diagrams the physics of any quantity in which enters N interacting excitons — or more generally N composite bosons —, with fermion exchanges included in an exact — and transparent — way.     

The Girardeau's fermion-boson procedure in the light of the composite-boson many-body theory

We reconsider the procedure developed for atoms a few decades ago by Girardeau, in the light of the composite-boson many-body theory we recently proposed. The Girardeau's procedure makes use of a so called “unitary Fock-Tani operator” which in an exact way transforms one composite bound atom into one bosonic “ideal” atom. When used to transform the Hamiltonian of interacting atoms, this operator generates an extremely complex set of effective scatterings between ideal bosonic atoms and free fermions which makes the transformed Hamiltonian impossible to write explicitly, in this way forcing to some truncation. The scatterings restricted to the ideal-atom subspace are shown to read rather simply in terms of the two elementary scatterings of the composite-boson many-body theory, namely, the energy-like direct interaction scatterings — which describe fermion interactions without fermion exchange — and the dimensionless Pauli scatterings — which describe fermion exchanges without fermion interaction. We here show that, due to a fundamental difference in the scalar products of elementary and composite bosons, the Hamiltonian expectation value for N ground state atoms obtained by staying in the ideal-atom subspace and working with boson operators only, differ from the exact ones even for N = 2 and a mapping to the ideal-atom subspace performed, as advocated, from the fully antisymmetrical atomic state, i.e., the state which obeys the so-called “subsidiary condition”. This shows that, within this Girardeau's procedure too, we cannot completely forget the underlying fermionic components of the particles if we want to correctly describe their interactions.     

Composite boson many-body theory for Frenkel excitons

We present a many-body theory for Frenkel excitons which takes into account their composite nature exactly. Our approach is based on four commutators similar to the ones we previously proposed for Wannier excitons. They allow us to calculate any physical quantity dealing with N excitons in terms of “Pauli scatterings” for carrier exchange in the absence of carrier interaction and “interaction scatterings” for carrier interactions in the absence of carrier exchange. We show that Frenkel excitons have a novel “transfer assisted exchange scattering”, specific to these excitons. It comes from indirect Coulomb processes between localized atomic states. These indirect processes, commonly called “electron-hole exchange” in the case of Wannier excitons and most often neglected, are crucial for Frenkel excitons, as they are the only ones responsible for the excitation transfer. We also show that in spite of the fact that Frenkel excitons are made of electrons and holes on the same atomic site, so that we could naively see them as elementary particles, they definitely are composite objects, their composite nature appearing through various properties, not always easy to guess. The present many-body theory for Frenkel excitons is thus going to appear as highly valuable to securely tackle their many-body physics, as in the case of nonlinear optical effects in organic semiconductors.     

Third order response to a multifrequency photon field in semiconductors

This paper contains a detailed calculation of the photoinduced current density at third order in the coupling between a semiconductor and a multifrequency photon field, starting from its standard textbook expression which reads in terms of a triple commutator. Due to a major intrinsic problem linked to this triple commutator, such a derivation has been made possible quite recently only, thanks to the tools developed in the composite-boson many-body theory we have recently constructed. The photoinduced current density is shown to ultimately read in a compact form, in terms of the “Pauli scatterings” and “Coulomb scatterings” for exciton-exciton interactions introduced in this theory. Representation of this third order response in Shiva diagrams, which visualize interactions between excitons, is also given to better grasp the physics of the various contributions.     

How composite bosons really interact

The aim of this paper is to clarify the conceptual difference which exists between the interactions of composite bosons and the interactions of elementary bosons. A special focus is made on the physical processes which are missed when composite bosons are replaced by elementary bosons. Although what is here said directly applies to excitons, it is also valid for composite bosons in other fields than semiconductor physics. We, in particular, explain how the two elementary scatterings – Coulomb and Pauli – of our many-body theory for composite excitons, can be extended to a pair of fermions which is not an Hamiltonian eigenstate – as for example a pair of trapped electrons, of current interest in quantum information.     

Ground state energy of N Frenkel excitons

By using the composite many-body theory for Frenkel excitons we have recently developed, we here derive the ground state energy of N Frenkel excitons in the Born approximation through the Hamiltonian mean value in a state made of N identical Q = 0 excitons. While this quantity reads as a density expansion in the case of Wannier excitons, due to many-body effects induced by fermion exchanges between N composite particles, we show that the Hamiltonian mean value for N Frenkel excitons only contains a first order term in density, just as for elementary bosons. Such a simple result comes from a subtle balance, difficult to guess a priori, between fermion exchanges for two or more Frenkel excitons appearing in Coulomb term and the ones appearing in the N exciton normalization factor – the cancellation being exact within terms in 1/N_s where N_s is the number of atomic sites in the sample. This result could make us naively believe that, due to the tight binding approximation on which Frenkel excitons are based, these excitons are just bare elementary bosons while their composite nature definitely appears at various stages in the precise calculation of the Hamiltonian mean value.     

Excitons dressed by a sea of excitons

We here consider an exciton i embedded in a sea of N identical excitons 0. If the excitons are taken as true bosons, a bosonic enhancement factor N is found for i=0. If the exciton composite nature is kept, this enhancement not only exists for i=0, but also for any exciton having a center of mass momentum equal to the sea exciton momentum. This physically comes from the fact that an exciton with such a momentum can be transformed into a sea exciton by Pauli scattering, i.e., carrier exchange with the sea, making this exciton i not so much different from a sea exciton. This possible scattering, directly linked to the composite nature of the excitons, is irretrievably lost when the excitons are bosonized. The underlying interest of this work is in fact the calculation of the scalar products of N-exciton states, which turns out to be quite tricky, due to possible carrier exchanges between excitons. This work actually constitutes a crucial piece of our many-body theory for interacting composite bosons, because all physical effects involving composite bosons ultimately end by the calculation of such scalar products. The skeleton diagrams we here introduce to represent them, allow to visualize many-body effects linked to carrier exchanges in an easy way. They are conceptually different from Feynman diagrams, because of the special feature of the Pauli scatterings which originate from boson statistics departure.     

Size shrinking of composite bosons for increasing density in the BCS to Bose-Einstein crossover

We consider a system of fermions in the continuum case at zero temperature, in the strong-coupling limit of a short-range attraction when composite bosons form as bound-fermion pairs. We examine the density dependence of the size of the composite bosons at leading order in the density (“dilute limit”), and show on general physical grounds that this size should decrease with increasing density, both in three and two dimensions. We then compare with the analytic zero-temperature mean-field solution, which indeed exhibits the size shrinking of the composite bosons both in three and two dimensions. We argue, nonetheless, that the two-dimensional mean-field solution is not consistent with our general result in the “dilute limit”, to the extent that mean field treats the scattering between composite bosons in the Born approximation which is known to break down at low energy in two dimensions. Received 3 June 1999 and Received in final form 29 July 1999     

Density expansion of the energy of N close-to-boson excitons

Pauli exclusion between the carriers of N excitons induces novel many-body effects, quite different from the ones generated by Coulomb interaction. Using our commutation technique for interacting close-to-boson particles, we here calculate the Hamiltonian expectation value in the N-ground-state-exciton state. Coulomb interaction enters this quantity at first order only by construction; nevertheless, due to Pauli exclusion, subtle many-body effects take place, which give rise to terms in (Na _x ³/)ⁿ with n ≥ 2. An exact procedure to get these density dependent terms is given. Received 11 February 2002 / Received in final form 30 May 2002 Published online 6 March 2003 RID="a" ID="a"e-mail: combescot@gps.jussieu.fr     

On the N-exciton normalization factor

The N-ground-state-exciton normalization factor, namely 〈v| B ₀ ^N B ₀ ^dagN| v〉 = N!F _N, with B ₀ ^d ag the exact ground state exciton creation operator, differs from N! because the excitons are not perfect bosons. The quantity F_N turns out to be crucial for problems dealing with interacting excitons. Indeed, the excitons feel each other not only through the Coulomb interaction but also through Pauli exclusion between their components. A quite novel purely Pauli contribution exists in their many-body effects, which relies directly on F_N. Following procedures used in the commutation technique we recently introduced to treat interacting close-to-bosons, and in the BCS theory of superconductivity, we rederive important relations verified by the F_N's. We also give new explicit expressions of F_N valid for η = Na _x ³/ small but N ² a _x ³/ large, as F_N does not read in terms of η but Nη, the exciton number N being possibly huge in macroscopic samples. Due to this superextensivity, F_N does not appear alone in physical quantities, but through ratios like F _{N + p}/F _N. We end this work by giving the η expansion of these ratios, useful for all purely Pauli many-body effects. Received 30 May 2002 / Received in final form 12 October 2002 Published online 27 January 2003 RID="a" ID="a"e-mail: combescot@gps.jussieu.fr     

Spin-Dependent Bohmian Electronic Trajectories for Helium

We examine “de Broglie-Bohm” causal trajectories for the two electrons in a nonrelativistic helium atom, taking into account the spin-dependent momentum terms that arise from the Pauli current. Given that this many-body problem is not exactly solvable, we examine approximations to various helium eigenstates provided by a low-dimensional basis comprised of tensor products of one-particle hydrogenic eigenstates. First to be considered are the simplest approximations to the ground and first-excited electronic states found in every introductory quantum mechanics textbook. For example, the trajectories associated with the simple 1s(1)1s(2) approximation to the ground state are, to say the least, nontrivial and nonclassical. We then examine higher-dimensional approximations, i.e., eigenstates Ψ _α of the Hamiltonian in this truncated basis, and show that ∇ _i S _α =0 for both particles, implying that only the spin-dependent momentum term contributes to electronic motion. This result is independent of the size of the truncated basis set, implying that the qualitative features of the trajectories will be the same, regardless of the accuracy of the eigenfunction approximation. The electronic motion associated with these eigenstates is quite specialized due to the condition that the spins of the two electrons comprise a two-spin eigenfunction of the total spin operator. The electrons either (i) remain stationary or (ii) execute circular orbits around the z-axis with constant velocity.     

“Moth-eaten effect” driven by Pauli blocking,revealed for cooper pairs

We extend the well-known Cooper’s problem beyond one pair and study how this dilute limit is connected to the many-pair Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) condensate. We find that, all over from the dilute to the dense regime of pairs, Pauli blocking induces the same “moth-eaten effect” as the one existing for composite boson excitons. This effect makes the average pair binding energy decrease linearly with pair number, bringing it, in the standard BCS configuration, to half the single-pair value. This proves that, at odds with popular understanding, the BCS gap is far larger than the broken pair energy. The increase comes from Pauli blocking between broken and unbroken pairs. Possible link between our result and the crossover between the Bose-Einstein condensate and BCS condensate is also discussed.     

Electron-hole diagrams versus exciton diagrams: the simplest problem on interacting excitons

We study the interaction of an exciton with a distant metal, which is the simplest problem on interacting excitons: The semiconductor and metal electrons being “different” species, we do not have to worry about the tricky consequences of Pauli exclusion between identical carriers, which appear in any other problem on interacting excitons. We show how the exciton absorption, in the presence of semiconductor-metal interaction, can be derived in a very simple and transparent way from an exciton diagram procedure, provided that we use the appropriate exciton-metal interaction vertex, which contains the scattering from an exciton state to another exciton state under a Coulomb excitation. We also show that the resolution of this problem using standard electron-hole diagrams is dreadfully complicated at the lowest order in the semiconductor-metal interaction already, preventing a full calculation of the exciton-metal coupling from this usual technique. Received 26 February 2001     

II. The standard model in the isotopic Foldy-Wouthuysen representation without higgs bosons in the fermion sector

The Standard Model with massive fermions is formulated in the isotopic Foldy-Wouthuysen representation. SU(1) × U(1) — invariance of the theory in this representation is independent of whether fermions possess mass or not, and, consequently, it is not necessary to introduce interactions between Higgs bosons and fermions. The study discusses a possible relation between spontaneous breaking of parity in the isotopic Foldy-Wouthuysen representation and the composition of elementary particles of “dark matter”.     

Watching it boil: Continuous observation for the quantum zeno effect

The quantum Zeno effect (QZE) is often associated with the ironic maxim, “a watched pot never boils”, although the notion of “watching” suggests a continuous activity at odds with the usual (pulsed measurement) presentation of the QZE. We show how continuous watching can provide the same halting of decay as the usual QZE, and, for incomplete hindrance, we provide a precise connection between the interval between projections and the response time of the continuous observer. Thus, watching closely, but not so closely as to halt the “boiling”, is equivalent to—gives the same degree of partial hindrance as—pulsed measurements with a particular pulsing rate. Our demonstration is accomplished by treating the apparatus for the continuous watching as a fully quantum object. This in turn allows us a second perspective on the QZE, in which it is the modified level structure of the combined system/apparatus Hamiltonian that slows the decay. This and other considerations favor the characterization “dominated time evolution” for the QZE.     

The carrier “antibinding” in quantum dots: a charge separation effect

We show that the carrier “antibinding” observed recently in semiconductor quantum dots, i.e., the fact that the ground state energy of two electron-hole pairs goes above twice the ground-state energy of one pair, can entirely be assigned to a charge separation effect, whatever its origin. In the absence of external electric field, this charge separation comes from different “spreading-out” of the electron and hole wavefunctions linked to the finite height of the barriers. When the dot size shrinks, the two-pair energy always stays below when the barriers are infinite. On the opposite, because barriers are less efficient for small dots, the energy of two-pairs in a dot with finite barriers, ends by behaving like the one in bulk, i.e., by going above twice the one-pair energy when the pairs get too close. For a full understanding of this “antibinding” effect, we have also reconsidered the case of one pair plus one carrier. We find that, while the carriers just have to spread out of the dot differently for the “antibinding” of two-pairs to appear, this “antibinding” for one pair plus one carrier only appears if this carrier is the one which spreads out the less. In addition a remarkable sum rule exists between the “binding energies” of two pairs and of one pair plus one carrier.     

Infrared behavior of interacting bosons at zero temperature

We review the infrared behavior of interacting bosons at zero temperature. After a brief discussion of the Bogoliubov approximation and the breakdown of perturbation theory due to infrared divergences, we present two approaches that are free of infrared divergences—Popov’s hydrodynamic theory and the nonperturbative renormalization group—and allow us to obtain the exact infrared behavior of the correlation functions. We also point out the connection between the infrared behavior in the superfluid phase and the critical behavior at the superfluid-Mott-insulator transition in the Bose-Hubbard model.     

Lie symmetry, discrete symmetry and supersymmetry of the Pauli Hamiltonian

Starting from the full group of symmetries of a system we select a discrete subset of transformations which allows to introduce the Clifford algebra of operators generating new supercharges of extended supersymmetry. The system defined by the Pauli Hamiltonian is discussed. Presented at the 10th International Colloquium on Quantum Groups: “Quantum Groups and Integrable Systems”, Prague, 21–23 June 2001 Partially supported by the KBN-Grant # 5 P03B056 20.     

Coboson formalism for Cooper pairs and its application to Richardson’s equations

We propose a many-body formalism for Cooper pairs which has similarities to the one we recently developed for composite boson excitons (coboson in short). Its Shiva diagram representation evidences that N Cooper pairs differ from N single pairs through electron exchange only: no direct coupling exists due to the very peculiar form of the reduced BCS potential. As a first application, we here use this formalism to derive Richardson’s equations for the exact eigenstates of N Cooper pairs. This derivation gives hints on why the N(N-1)N(N-1) dependence of the N-pair ground state energy we recently obtained by solving Richardson’s equations analytically in the low density limit, stays valid up to the dense regime. No higher order dependence exists under large overlap, a surprising result hard to accept at first. We also briefly question the BCS wave function ansatz compared to Richardson’s exact form, in the light of our understanding of coboson many-body effects.