One-body coherence of a Hartree condensate 2026-10-25
For the normalized Hartree product state , applying the bosonic annihilation operator gives . Taking the inner product proves the displayed factorization of the one-body density matrix. Its diagonal is the total number density in this approximation. For a real positive orbital, . Restoring the kinetic energy in a Gross–Pitaevskii equation can smooth a Thomas–Fermi approximation for a condensate edge while retaining this factorization. Describing quantum depletion of a Bose condensate additionally requires noncondensate mode occupations and their contribution to the one-body density matrix.
The Holstein–Primakoff transformation realizes a spin algebra using bosonic creation operators and bosonic annihilation operators. A boson counts a unit of spin deviation from the local positive quantization axis: with . The square root in supplies the correct spin-ladder matrix elements. In particular,Their commutator is on every physical number state, reproducing the Spin commutation relations. Although the oscillator Fock space is infinite, the physical subspace is onlyThe order of the square root and oscillator operator matters in obtaining these coefficients.
When the spin deviations are dilute, expand the square root in . The leading transverse operators are linear in the bosonic creation operators and bosonic annihilation operators and turn exchange interactions into a quadratic Hamiltonian, which can be diagonalized. Higher powers describe interactions between spin waves. The method therefore organizes corrections by inverse powers of about an ordered classical configuration. Large alone is insufficient: the average depletion must remain small compared with . Possible problems include the occupation constraint after truncation, noncollinear order requiring site-dependent axis rotations, zero modes, and infrared fluctuations that destroy the assumed dilute expansion.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2007 iii Paper 10 8 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
The loop group here is , with pointwise multiplication. Although it is abelian, its nontrivial positive-energy quantum representations are projective: implementers can commute only up to a phase. A positive energy representation of the loop group of U(1) has rotations whose self-adjoint generator is bounded below and which implement in the projective unitary group. The fermionic construction gives both that phase and an explicit bosonic description.
Choose the one-particle Hilbert space with modes , , and projection onto . Use the polarized fermionic Fock spacewhere the exterior powers are Hilbert-completed and the tensor product is graded. Its vacuum fills all modes and leaves empty; excitations are particles in the empty modes and holes in the filled modes. The fermionic annihilation operators and fermionic creation operators satisfy the canonical anticommutation relationsFinite particle-hole configurations form an orthonormal basis. As in the finite-dimensional exterior algebra construction, their creation and annihilation operators act irreducibly: an operator in the commutant sends the vacuum to a scalar vacuum, since the joint kernel of its vacuum annihilators is one-dimensional, and then acts by that scalar on the dense configuration basis.
Segal's quantization criterion for fermions says that a unitary one-particle operator has a unitary implementer on this Fock space, satisfying , exactly whenEquivalently is Hilbert-Schmidt. Implementers are unique up to phase, hence form a projective unitary representation of the restricted unitary group. This is the fermionic, polarized criterion; it is not a condition that the entire operator be Hilbert-Schmidt. The criterion and the corresponding continuity topology are stated in Theorem III.2.1.1 of the fermionic construction of loop-group representations. For the compact principal-angle part of a pair of polarizations, the threshold has a concrete interpretation. Its two-dimensional blocks are rotations through angles ; finitely many unmatched modes can be handled separately. Each angle rotates the vacuum into times its original component plus times a particle-hole pair. After discarding finitely many exceptional blocks, the successive tensor products are Cauchy precisely when converges to a nonzero value, equivalently . In this block model the sum is exactly half the squared Hilbert-Schmidt norm of the projection difference; finitely many unmatched modes account for a change of charge. Infinitely many unmatched modes already violate the criterion. This explains why infinitely many arbitrarily small mixings can fail to be implementable.
For , multiplication is a unitary one-particle operator. Its matrix entry from to is . ThereforeFor a fixed difference , exactly pairs cross the polarization boundary. Smoothness makes the sum finite, so Segal's quantization criterion for fermions constructs a continuous projective unitary representation of every smooth loop. Smooth convergence gives operator-norm convergence of and Hilbert-Schmidt convergence of its commutator, which is sufficient for the strong projective continuity of the implementers.
Normal ordering fixes the charge and rotation energy. On the dense finite-configuration domain putThe sums are finite on each configuration. A particle at adds charge one and energy ; a hole at adds charge minus one and energy . Consequently is a nonnegative self-adjoint diagonal operator with integer spectrum and finite-dimensional eigenspaces. The unitaries are strongly continuous, have period , and implement . Conjugating multiplication by this one-particle rotation gives , so their Fock implementers rotate the loop representation projectively. This is an actual positive-energy circle action.
The scalar anomaly is visible in the Heisenberg current algebra of a fermion on the circle. Define on finite-energy vectorsFor fixed the sum has only finitely many nonzero actions on any configuration. Direct use of the canonical anticommutation relations givesOn summing, the two noncentral sums cancel. If the central sum is : for the terms are precisely . ThusIn particular for . The coefficient one in the central term is the level of this basic representation.
Let be smooth and real. The normal-ordered infinitesimal implementer of multiplication by isThe sign of the current index matters: multiplication by raises the one-particle mode by , so it corresponds to . It follows either directly from the bilinear commutator or from the fermionic currents on the circle that . For trigonometric these are oscillator fields on the finite-energy domain; their self-adjoint closures exponentiate to the implementers of . For general smooth , their extensions are obtained by the oscillator-field construction below: guarantees the square-summable field coefficients, and Fourier truncation converges in the corresponding Weyl relations implementers. Thus no unjustified infinite operator product is required.
SetIt is real and antisymmetric for real . The Heisenberg current algebra of a fermion on the circle relations give . The Weyl relations, or the finite-mode Baker-Campbell-Hausdorff computation followed by the square-summable limit, yieldThis is an explicit two-cocycle on the identity component of the loop group. A different phase choice changes it by a group coboundary, but its antisymmetric commutator remains , and hence cannot be removed.
The winding components also matter. Every smooth loop is with , real periodic , and mean determined modulo . Let implement multiplication by . It moves the filled boundary one place upwards, so it raises charge by one; phases of charge ground states can be chosen so that . Conjugating the fermionic currents on the circle givesChoose . Since , one obtains the full loop group two-cocycle for U(1)The exponent is bilinear in the additive winding-logarithm coordinates, so expansion immediately gives . Replacing by changes by , whose exponential is identity since charges are integers; the scalar cocycle also stays unchanged since . Thus the expression is well-defined on loops, not just on chosen logarithms. It records both the derivative anomaly and the commutator of winding with constant loops.
For the fermion-boson correspondence on the circle, decompose into charge eigenspaces. The charge- ground state fills all integer modes . Its energy isFor , sum the energies of the added modes ; for , sum the hole energies of the removed modes . Every other charge- configuration is obtained by moving finitely many occupied levels upwards, so this is the lowest energy. Since preserves charge and lowers energy by , for .
Define bosonic annihilation operators and , . They obey . Their occupation vectorsare orthonormal by commuting positive fermionic currents on the circle through negative fermionic currents on the circle. Their energies are . It remains to prove that they span, rather than assume the boson correspondence. Count configurations by formal charge and energy . Empty modes can contain one extra particle, while filled modes , , can contain one hole. Therefore the fermionic character isThe charge form of the Jacobi triple product proved in Question 4 identifies this withThe reciprocal product counts bosonic occupations, or partitions of an integer. For fixed charge and energy, the finite-dimensional fermion space has exactly as many basis configurations as the independent fermionic current on the circle monomials already constructed. Hence those monomials exhaust every such space, proving their dense completeness. This establishes a unitary identification of every charge sector with a bosonic Fock space, and on that identificationThe usual half-integer fermion convention instead gives ground energy and requires the corresponding adjustment of rotations. Here integer modes were deliberately chosen to obtain a genuine circle action with integral nonnegative energies. The two ground states of energy zero, at charges zero and one, are therefore consistent, not a negative-energy defect.
This is also a constructive bosonic realization of the loop representation: the mean of acts by , nonzero modes of act as the square-summable oscillator field , and winding shifts the charge sectors. Taking tensor copies adds the fermionic current on the circle central terms and gives level . Positivity constrains their sign, since in a vacuum sector for . The level-one construction, its explicit loop cocycle, and its complete bosonic occupation basis show how an abelian classical loop group acquires noncommuting quantum currents while retaining positive rotation energy.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 iii Paper 305 1 b Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-05
The bosonic annihilation operator removes a vector particle of four-momentum and polarization vector . The bosonic creation operator creates its antiparticle with the same four-momentum and polarization label. The polarization vector describes the corresponding spin-one mode expansion of a free field.
Because charge conjugation acts through a unitary operator, it leaves the numerical polarization vector coefficients unchanged. Applying the specified charge conjugation to the operators givesComparison with the Hermitian conjugation of the original expansion therefore givesThe factor is the intrinsic charge-conjugation phase.
Write , , and . At zero temperature all particles occupy . Expanding the bosonic annihilation operator in single-particle orbitals givesThis one-body density matrix is a Gaussian function of width ; it contains one wavefunction evaluated at , so its exponent is half that of the spatial number density . In particular,the total number density at the trap centre, including condensed and noncondensed particles.
At positive temperature, with occupations of the trap energy eigenstates, the exact ideal-gas decomposition isFor , the sketch has a broad Bose-Einstein condensate component on scale and a narrower thermal peak near the origin. On approaching the broad component loses its weight , while the thermal part remains. Above there is no macroscopic broad Bose-Einstein condensate component; close to , low energy levels can still give a shoulder, so a single narrow Gaussian function is only a high-temperature description. At individual excited energy levels matter and the two-scale description need not apply.
For the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution applies. The leading off-diagonal one-body density matrix isHere is the Gaussian function width defined by , and is the thermal de Broglie wavelength. The thermal cloud itself extends over the much larger spatial scale ; this is a correlation width, not the cloud radius.
Past exam of the theoretical physics II course of the University of Cambridge 2019 3 a Solution 2026-10-18
For bosonic creation operators and bosonic annihilation operators, the canonical commutation relations areFor fermionic annihilation operators and their adjoints, the canonical anticommutation relations areThe respective number operators are and . Their allowed eigenvalues are . In the fermionic case , so its eigenvalues must satisfy ; this is the single-mode Pauli exclusion principle.
The Holstein–Primakoff transformation realizes a spin algebra using bosonic creation operators and bosonic annihilation operators. A boson counts a unit of spin deviation from the local positive quantization axis: with . The square root in supplies the correct spin-ladder matrix elements. In particular,Their commutator is on every physical number state, reproducing the Spin commutation relations. Although the oscillator Fock space is infinite, the physical subspace is onlyThe order of the square root and oscillator operator matters in obtaining these coefficients.
When the spin deviations are dilute, expand the square root in . The leading transverse operators are linear in the bosonic creation operators and bosonic annihilation operators and turn exchange interactions into a quadratic Hamiltonian, which can be diagonalized. Higher powers describe interactions between spin waves. The method therefore organizes corrections by inverse powers of about an ordered classical configuration. Large alone is insufficient: the average depletion must remain small compared with . Possible problems include the occupation constraint after truncation, noncollinear order requiring site-dependent axis rotations, zero modes, and infrared fluctuations that destroy the assumed dilute expansion.
Quadratic bosonic Hamiltonian 2026-10-25
A quadratic bosonic Hamiltonian contains terms of degree two in bosonic creation operators and bosonic annihilation operators, with an optional constant. The number-conserving matrix is Hermitian and the pair matrix may be taken symmetric. Positive stable forms can be diagonalized by a canonical Bogoliubov transformation; the strict stability condition matters at zero modes.
