Past exam of the quantum matter course of the University of Oxford / 2023 / 2 / a / Solution

For a uniform continuum gas with pair interactions depending on relative positions, a Galilean boost changes every particle momentum by $p_0\hat{\mathbf{x}}$ and leaves the interaction energy unchanged. Write ${\hat{P}}_x={\sum }_j{\hat{p}}_{j,x}$. The transformed many-body Hamiltonian operator isThe resting ground state has $⟨{\hat{P}}_x⟩=0$, so the Galilean boost energy of an interacting gas isThe mass here is the bare particle mass, because this is an exact transformation of the microscopic kinetic energy. Substituting the Fermi-liquid effective mass $m^{\ast }$ would omit the change in interaction energy encoded by the Landau quasiparticle energy functional. This conclusion requires the Principle of Galilean relativity; a gas in a lattice or a fixed external potential energy landscape need not obey it.