BCS ground state Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-11-05
The BCS ground state is a product of empty and occupied pair states:The modulus squares are needed when the amplitudes are complex. Each pair block is a normalized two-state quantum superposition; multiplying independent blocks preserves normalization.
The positive-energy Bogoliubov quasiparticle annihilation operators annihilate this paired mean-field state, so it is their vacuum even though physical electron occupations are nonzero. The pair momentum is zero, but labels all relative momenta in the chosen pairing space; it is not restricted to . [ref]
Theory of Superconductivity by John Bardeen and others. Section II, product paired-state variational construction; complex-amplitude normalization shown explicitly here
The state superposes different total particle numbers. A fixed-number approximation can project it onto one number sector. The utility of the unprojected state is that independent pair blocks make the BCS anomalous average, excitation spectrum and BCS gap equation directly calculable.
Closed-vessel thermal transpiration 2026-10-18
Two equal sealed vessels of fixed volume, initially at , exchange an ideal gas through a thin effusive opening. Hold one at and the other at , with both interiors locally thermalized. Zero net particle transfer gives . Writing , conservation of total particle number gives and . Thus . The alternative , requires a cold reservoir whose pressure is externally held fixed; it is not the closed equal-volume problem.
Condensate fluctuation power counting Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-10-25
Expand a weakly depleted Bose gas around its macroscopically occupied mode. Replacing a condensate operator by an amplitude of order gives quadratic, cubic and quartic fluctuation interaction scales proportional to , and , with the same interaction-volume factor. Thus the depletion fraction supplies formal amplitude counting. This is not a uniform bound on infrared modes or a substitute for checking the interaction regime. At fixed particle number, expansion of the condensate interaction must precede the final quadratic truncation; the resulting cancellation is the number-conserving Bogoliubov quadratic Hamiltonian.
Contact interaction between two box modes Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
For distinct box modes and , the displayed contact interaction overlaps produce self terms , a density term , and pair conversion . Pair conversion preserves total particle number but prevents diagonalization by individual occupation numbers. The additional overlaps are and , following from . Third-harmonic mode pairs therefore also permit single-particle transfer assisted by the other particles. For the first two box modes these additional terms vanish.
Contact interaction between two ring modes Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-11-05
Two distinct normalized plane waves on a periodic one-dimensional ring of length give the displayed projected contact interaction. Momentum conservation excludes pair conversion between these two modes. Four mixed operator orderings give the coefficient of . At fixed particle number , the energy is . For repulsive coupling, its minima are the two endpoint Fock states with all particles in one mode; a one-particle energy difference selects the lower mode. This ground-state statement concerns the two-mode projection.
Electron heat capacity Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
The contribution of electrons to heat capacity. For a uniform noninteracting three-dimensional Fermi gas at fixed particle number and volume, its low-temperature value is ; only states near the Fermi surface can change occupation readily.
Entropy concavity and positive heat capacity Created 2026-09-29 Updated 2026-11-05
For an equilibrium entropy that is concave in energy at fixed volume and particle number, the thermodynamic relation gives, wherever the derivatives are finite and invertible,Strict concavity therefore implies positive heat capacity at constant volume. A straight coexistence segment can instead have constant temperature over an energy interval; finite strictly positive heat-capacity conclusions do not apply there.
There is also a direct canonical ensemble statement for a temperature-independent Hamiltonian operator:The numerator is the canonical energy variance. Positivity follows from a variance, without assuming an ideal gas or noninteracting particles.
The concavity hypothesis is essential. Isolated systems with long-range gravitational interactions can have negative heat capacity in a microcanonical ensemble; the familiar virialized-gas example does not belong to a stable canonical branch in contact with an infinite heat bath. A claim that every stable equilibrium has strictly positive heat capacity would erase this ensemble distinction.
For a weakly depleted homogeneous Bose gas with repulsive contact interaction, set and . A zero-mode coherent state times a two-mode squeezed vacuum for each opposite-momentum pair has mean particle number . Substitution of into the leading condensate interaction energy, followed by a consistent quadratic truncation, gives the displayed variational energy. Omitting this substitution loses the subtraction embodied in the number-conserving Bogoliubov quadratic Hamiltonian.
For each mode set and . If , choose . The mode contribution equals , proving a unique minimum . At fixed ultraviolet cutoff this lowers the energy relative to the uncorrelated condensate. The approximation requires small quantum depletion of a Bose condensate; an unregulated three-dimensional ground-state energy also requires renormalization of a three-dimensional dilute-gas contact coupling.
Fixed-number low-temperature Pauli susceptibility Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-11-05
For a smooth single-spin density of states near a positive Fermi energy and fixed total particle number, the Sommerfeld expansion gives . The spin contribution to the total-moment magnetic susceptibility, defined by differentiating with respect to , is . Expanding about and including the shift of chemical potential gives the displayed formula. The term is thermal broadening; the term enforces fixed particle number. A band edge or singular density of states within of requires a separate analysis. Orbital magnetic response is excluded.
Fugacity (statistical mechanics) 2026-10-18
The dimensionless quantum gas fugacity weights particle number in the grand canonical ensemble: a state with energy and particle number has weight . The chemical potential and one-particle energies must use the same reference. When the lowest one-particle energy is zero, makes both fermion and boson occupations small throughout the low-energy spectrum. This dimensionless quantity must be distinguished from the pressure-valued fugacity used in chemical thermodynamics.
Grand-potential particle-number variance Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-10-20
Differentiating the grand partition function at fixed temperature and volume gives and . It follows because derivatives of the logarithm of the state sum generate cumulants of particle number. Nonnegative variance makes the grand potential concave in chemical potential in a stable grand-canonical description.
Infrared qualification of condensate fluctuation counting Created 2026-10-20 Updated 2026-11-05
A small noncondensed fraction provides a useful global expansion parameter for a weakly interacting Bose gas, but does not bound every long-wavelength mode individually. In Bogoliubov theory, mode amplitudes can grow as momentum approaches zero, while their integrated contribution remains finite in some dimensions and regimes.
A fluctuation integral includes both the small-momentum behavior and the momentum-space measure. For example, an integrand proportional to contributes in spatial dimensions, which converges at zero only for . Thermal factors can make the infrared behavior more singular. Thus condensate fluctuation power counting must be supplemented by checking the relevant integrals, system size and temperature. The uniform phase mode and fixed particle number constraint also require their own treatment.
Mean velocity of a kinetic distribution Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-11-05
For one species of particles of mass , let be a nonnegative number-normalized phase-space distribution function. If its total particle number is nonzero and its first velocity moment is finite, defineThis global mean velocity is an expected value under the normalized particle distribution. Its numerator is ; the total momentum is instead . If the distribution is mass-normalized, , its zeroth moment is total mass and its first moment is directly . Stating the convention prevents a missing particle-mass factor.
A local mean velocity at uses only the velocity integral, dividing by the local number density where . A multispecies barycentric mean velocity weights species by their mass densities, not just their particle numbers.
The mean velocity does not measure random motion. Two equally populated narrow beams at and have zero mean velocity while retaining nonzero kinetic energy. Central velocity moments use to describe this motion relative to the flow.
Momentum distribution 2026-11-05
A momentum distribution describes the statistical weight of particle momenta, with its normalization stated. A one-particle distribution can be normalized to one as a probability density or to the particle number; these conventions differ by a factor.
For a pure state with momentum-space wavefunction , the probability density is under the chosen Fourier normalization. In many-body systems, the one-body density matrix determines the single-particle momentum occupation. A narrow momentum peak can indicate coherence, but finite size, interactions and the measurement protocol also affect the observed profile.
Number variance of an interacting defect 2026-10-20
With , and , direct four-state averaging givesFor it has two separated peaks of height at the spin-degeneracy-shifted charge steps. At the lower bare crossing , three microstates share equal limiting weight, giving and variance . The upper bare crossing similarly gives mean and variance . Between crossings occupation is pinned near one and fluctuations are suppressed. The identity is grand-canonical; fixing total particle number would change the fluctuation question.
Particle-conserving displacement of a Fermi circle Created 2026-10-25 Updated 2026-11-05
Translating a Fermi circle of radius by preserves its area. For , its radial displacement from the original centre is the displayed expression. Its Taylor expansion is . The second-order term cancels the apparent area increase from the first-order shape: . This distinction matters when converting a grand-potential variation into a fixed-particle number energy change.
Particle number 2026-10-18
A particle number counts the particles of a specified kind in a system. For a fixed collection, is a nonnegative integer. In a variable-number quantum system, distinguish a measured particle number, the particle number operator, and its expected value.
The coherent state in the zero mode has mean occupation number . The other occupation numbers follow from part (c), giving exactlyImpose the fixed mean particle number by choosingHere is the quantum depletion of a Bose condensate. The approximation requires , so remains positive and macroscopically large. The specified coherent state and multimode squeezed vacuum are not exact eigenstates of the total number operator; in this variational construction is their prescribed mean particle number.
Write . Substituting into the retained part of the interaction energy before truncating givesThe last two terms quadratic in have no explicit large- factor when the Bogoliubov transformation parameters are held fixed, and are discarded along with the nonzero-mode quartic contribution already omitted in part (c). This is the same truncation that underlies the number-conserving Bogoliubov quadratic Hamiltonian. Thus, defining the physical number density correctly as ,Replacing by at the outset would give the wrong coefficient : expanding the leading condensate interaction energy supplies the necessary subtraction.
The printed definition is an error. In three dimensions the contact interaction coupling has units of energy times volume, so does not even have units of energy. There is a direct counterexample with no depletion: when , the specified coherent state has exactly . In fixed length and energy units, , and give , whereas the printed with gives . The requested formula and the minimization in part (e) hold with .
At fixed particle number and pressure, the joint isothermal-isobaric ensemble weight for a microstate of energy and volume is . Write its enthalpy as . Differentiating the isothermal-isobaric partition function with a temperature-independent volume measure givesAfter division by this is the normalized ensemble average, soThe differentiation assumes that the microscopic Hamiltonian and the integration measure have no additional explicit temperature dependence. An extra temperature-dependent normalization factor must be differentiated separately.
Past exam of the condensed matter physics course of the University of Oxford 2021 3 b Solution 2026-10-25
For a nondegenerate two-dimensional electron gas, the two quadratic momentum terms supply each by the equipartition theorem. There is no lattice restoring potential energy for a free electron. ThusOn cooling below the Fermi temperature, the Pauli exclusion principle restricts the thermally active electrons to within approximately of the Fermi energy. The linear low-temperature heat capacity of a two-dimensional Fermi gas isThe heat capacity therefore decreases from its classical value as quantum degeneracy becomes important. The particle number of electrons and sample area are held fixed when differentiating the internal energy.