Condensate depletion means particles outside a macroscopically occupied bosonic single-particle mode. Interactions can deplete that mode even at zero temperature: the Bogoliubov transformation mixes creation and annihilation operators, so its quasiparticle vacuum contains particles at nonzero momentum. A weak homogeneous three-dimensional gas with repulsive scattering length has leading quantum depletion of a Bose condensate
Thermal quasiparticles add another contribution. Depletion and normal-fluid density are distinct: a Galilean-invariant fluid can have quantum depletion while retaining its full superfluid mass response at zero temperature.
For the fermionic pairing problem, mean-field decoupling of the reduced BCS pairing Hamiltonian introduces the anomalous amplitude . Each paired Nambu block has diagonal entries and off-diagonal pairing entries of magnitude . A phase convention with negative off-diagonal entries gives eigenvalues , where . Its canonical Bogoliubov rotation yields the BCS coherence factors
The partner transformation has the complementary sign required by fermionic anticommutation. At zero temperature all positive-energy BCS quasiparticle modes are empty. Expanding the supplied electron operator therefore gives
Since ,
The electron occupation is close to one far below the normal-state Fermi surface, equals one half at , and decays toward zero above it. Pairing smooths the Fermi step over an energy range of order . The positive-energy quasiparticle occupation is instead zero everywhere at this temperature; the electron sea and the quasiparticle vacuum are different descriptions of the same state. At finite temperature, in the same mean-field model.
Figure 1.
Zero quasiparticle occupation coexists with electron population above the normal-state Fermi surface
. Original isotropic BCS calculation. The left panel uses an illustrative gap-to-chemical-potential ratio of 0.1; it is not measured mercury or cuprate data. Details.
For a three-dimensional parabolic normal band, the total density of states including both spins is . In the weak-gap limit, replace it by this constant across the narrow pairing region and use . The number of electrons above the normal-state Fermi surface is
The integral is . Therefore the BCS population above the normal-state Fermi surface is
The constant-density-of-states approximation and a small gap relative to the chemical potential are essential. This is the question's explicitly defined fermionic population measure; it is not the fraction of electrons outside a single bosonic condensate orbital.
For an order-of-magnitude mercury estimate, use and the weak-coupling scale , with a representative metallic . These input approximations give , of order . The use of a weak-coupling gap is an estimate, not an assertion of mercury's exact measured gap.
For a copper oxide, an illustrative gap and effective chemical-potential scale give about three per cent in this formula. Choosing – instead gives roughly – per cent. These are explicit example inputs: the paper specifies no compound, doping or band parameters from which a unique number follows. A real cuprate's anisotropic gap, quasi-two-dimensional band and strong correlations require a band-resolved occupation integral, so the reliable contrast is the much larger gap-to-electronic-energy scale, rather than a universal cuprate percentage.
Use the forward spatial transform and inverse . The retarded transformed Green function obeys
It vanishes for negative . Continuity at zero excludes an unwanted term; integrating across zero then fixes . Define and . The two homogeneous exponents are . Imposing the two matching conditions gives the Fourier-mode Green function of the telegraph equation,
For an explicit time-Fourier route, use . Then
For , both poles lie below the real axis. Closing above for gives zero; closing below for is clockwise, giving times the residue sum. Since , this is
which reduces to the same damped sine or hyperbolic sine above. The pole on the real axis is interpreted by the retarded limiting prescription, or directly by the initial-value matching above.
For the response is overdamped and nonoscillatory. For , put ; analytic continuation gives , a real damped oscillation. At equality the finite limit is .
All nonzero Fourier modes decay. The uniform mode instead has for positive time, leaving a constant temperature increment. At small wavenumber the slow decay exponent is , so the diffusion limit of the damped heat-transmission equation has diffusivity . The full hyperbolic equation has finite propagation speed , unlike the limiting parabolic heat equation.
The spatial transform of is . Convolution with the impulsive source and the inverse transform therefore give simply . Take without loss of generality and set .
For , let . Then
For , let . Then
Both satisfy and , so the impulse changes the time derivative rather than discontinuously changing temperature. The first case rises and then relaxes without sign oscillations for a nonzero mode; the second oscillates as its amplitude decays. The limiting equality gives , and gives the nondecaying uniform increment discussed above.
A cosine source has both positive and negative regions, so this linear solution can be understood as a temperature perturbation about a background; its negative values are not assertions of negative absolute temperature. The temporal oscillations arise from the second-time-derivative term. Dropping that term changes the initial-jump structure as well as removing the underdamped regime.
Figure 1.
Retarded thermal-mode responses
. Details.
The expansion is a local phenomenological description in a small scalar order parameter near a transition. Its coefficients summarize microscopic physics and generally depend smoothly on temperature. At zero field, spin-reversal Z2 symmetry requires even powers of magnetization; the conjugate field supplies the term . The additive does not affect minimization with respect to .
For the ordinary continuous-transition quartic model, ensures stability, and the quadratic coefficient changes sign, with . If vanishes or is negative, stabilizing higher powers are required and the phase structure can change. Treating one uniform magnetization neglects spatial gradients, fluctuations and domains; the resulting exponents are predictions of mean-field theory.
Differentiate the equation of state at fixed temperature:
Above the transition, zero-field equilibrium has . Below it the stable pure phases have . Thus
This is the mean-field magnetic-susceptibility amplitude ratio. Below the transition, take a one-sided response in a selected ordered phase: the globally minimizing magnetization switches discontinuously between opposite phases when crosses zero. Its two-sided derivative at precisely zero field is therefore not the finite pure-phase magnetic susceptibility used in the ratio.
For the isotropic zero-field classical Heisenberg model of a ferromagnet, the analytic vector Landau expansion uses the Cartesian components of the vector order parameter near . rotational symmetry makes its scalar terms functions of . Global spin inversion symmetry also requires . Through fourth order this gives
A positive quartic coefficient stabilizes the unconstrained truncated free energy. The disordered phase has and its minimum at ; the aligned phase has and a minimum at nonzero . At the continuous transition . The attractive alignment interaction supplies an energetic tendency toward negative quadratic curvature; orientational entropy favors the disordered phase at high temperature, so the sign of is a free-energy question rather than a consequence of the pair energy alone.
The analyticity assumption matters: the variable printed as is a nonnegative magnitude, so reversing does not send that scalar to . Terms proportional to or would be rotationally invariant but nonanalytic at the vector origin. Standard analytic Landau theory excludes them. Without that assumption, the stated pair symmetry alone would not exclude odd powers of the magnitude.[ref]
Differentiation gives . For the origin is the global minimum; for , has and . Therefore, close enough to the transition for the quartic expansion to apply,
The order parameter approaches zero continuously with mean-field critical exponent : the transition is continuous. In the aligned phase a particular direction is chosen. The vector-spin rotation symmetry is spontaneously broken from to , or from to including reflections. The manifold of vector order parameter directions is a sphere, so this is not just a two-state sign choice.[ref]
Figure 1.
Quartic ferromagnetic free energy and the continuous equilibrium magnetization curve
. Details.
The plot uses illustrative and temperature measured in units of . A unit-spin average must satisfy ; if the quartic model is used literally far below the transition, its constrained minimum is . In practice the near-transition expansion is not a controlled prediction of deep low-temperature saturation. Also, a finite zero-field statistical ensemble that averages all directions has even below ; the curve describes the magnitude in a selected ordered state, obtained by appropriate boundary conditions or the thermodynamic limit before removing a small magnetic field.
The density operator is diagonal in the oscillator number basis, so . With and ,
Hence
Equality holds even at zero temperature, when each contribution is . Classical equipartition alone would miss this zero-point energy.
Set . The oscillator populations are , and differentiating the geometric series gives . The canonical oscillator coordinate variance follows from , and
It approaches at zero temperature and at high temperature, agreeing respectively with ground-state fluctuations and classical equipartition.
For the canonical quantum Gibbs state,
If , its spectral form is , with a sum over any degeneracy and an integral where a continuous spectrum needs one. It is Hermitian, positive and has unit trace, and it commutes with . The formula presumes a well-defined finite partition function. At zero temperature a nondegenerate stable system approaches its ground-state projector; a degenerate ground space requires specifying the ensemble or preparation.
Specify the magnetic coupling before fixing its sign: let the magnetic moment be , where is a signed gyromagnetic ratio. The Zeeman effect gives . For spin one-half, , so with and ,
This is the quantum Gibbs state. Its eigenvalues are , so its purity is . For nonzero level splitting it approaches a pure state as : positive inverse temperature selects the lower energy, while negative inverse temperature selects the upper one. It is a maximally mixed state at , including infinite temperature or zero magnetic splitting. At zero field the Gibbs state remains ; lowering temperature alone does not select a unique pure state from that degeneracy.
Negative temperature is meaningful for an internally equilibrated spin sector with a bounded energy spectrum and population inversion. It must be sufficiently isolated from unbounded motional degrees of freedom: the oscillator's unbounded spectrum, for instance, makes its partition sum diverge at negative inverse temperature. The two-level spin partition sum itself stays finite for either sign.
For , the quantum Gibbs state is diagonal in the basis. Its two probabilities are proportional to . Thus
At small inverse temperature, . As a function of , the normalized spin component is the smooth odd curve : it crosses zero at and saturates at . As a function of its direction is reversed if . For , positive temperature favors , while negative temperature gives the inverted population.
Figure 1.
Thermal spin one-half polarization versus dimensionless inverse temperature
. Original plot of , with . For , the negative- half corresponds to negative temperature. Dashed lines mark the fully polarized limits. Details.
The fixed-particle-number sector is spanned by and . In this basis,
The relevant quantum Gibbs state is normalized within this two-dimensional sector, not over all particle numbers. With and , the exponential of a Pauli vector gives
Therefore
Its eigenstates are , with energies and probabilities . These are nonnegative and sum to one, so the matrix is Hermitian and has trace one. Its purity of a density operator is
For , the zero-temperature limit is the pure ground-state projector,
with purity one. As , and , with purity . At every strictly positive finite temperature and finite , both eigenvalues are nonzero, so the state is mixed. If , the two levels are degenerate and the Gibbs state is at all temperatures, including its zero-temperature limit.
Using dimensionless Von Neumann entropy, , gives
For nonzero , as , while as . More precisely, the high-temperature expansion is , and the low-temperature form is . The thermodynamic entropy includes an overall factor .
Take the two magnetic moments along to be , so and the two energies are . The quantum Gibbs state at inverse temperature is
Its Bloch vector is . At , or in the high-temperature limit, it approaches ; at with nonzero , it approaches the lower-energy pure state. Here is the magnitude or signed coefficient multiplying in the magnetic Hamiltonian, rather than a moment with an additional unstated factor of two.
For each pair of adjacent spins, define the transfer matrix for a classical spin chain by . Multiplying its entries gives the Boltzmann factor of a whole configuration. The periodic boundary condition identifies the last index with the first, so
The assumed interchange symmetry of makes a real symmetric matrix, hence it has an orthonormal eigenbasis. At finite positive temperature, every matrix entry is strictly positive, so the Perron–Frobenius theorem supplies a unique positive largest eigenvalue , larger in modulus than every other one. Therefore .
Local observables become matrix insertions. For example, with ,
Thus partition functions and correlation functions reduce to a fixed-dimensional eigenvalue problem, rather than a sum over exponentially many microstates.
Let be the base-spin insertion matrix. In the eigenbasis from solution, its diagonal matrix elements vanish: . Hence
not only at large but for every finite ring at zero field.
This vanishing is not merely an averaging artifact hiding a finite-temperature ordered phase. The two-point correlation function is . In the thermodynamic limit it becomes , with finite correlation length for every and . Thermal domain walls destroy long-range alignment in this one-dimensional short-range system. At zero temperature, the two fully aligned ground states are degenerate; that limiting case must be distinguished from any fixed positive temperature.
Insert at the first undecorated site. In the eigenbasis of the transfer matrix, exchanges and , and both diagonal matrix elements vanish. Explicitly,
Thus its large- limit is zero at every fixed . The result is exact even before taking that limit. Equivalently, simultaneous reversal of all spins pairs configurations of equal energy and opposite . Positivity of the transfer matrix at fixed positive temperature prevents a degenerate dominant eigenvalue and spontaneous magnetization in this one-dimensional zero-field chain. Selecting one aligned state at strictly zero temperature is a different order of limits.
Insert the decorating-spin observable into the one bond that contains it. The decorated-spin occupation insertion uses the matrix:
The partition function still contains decorating-spin sums; one of them has been replaced by this weighted sum. Hence
Taking the dominant eigenvector gives
This is the probability that the decorating site is in either nonzero state. It tends to at high temperature, when its three states are equally likely, and to one at low temperature, when the nonzero aligned states gain bond energy. Unlike the magnetization, this even observable is not forced to vanish by spin reversal.
For low temperature, factor out the largest Boltzmann factor from the dominant eigenvalue:
Thus the Helmholtz free energy per site has the expansion
Differentiate at fixed , remembering that . The entropy per site is
The nonzero residual entropy comes from an exponentially large ground-state degeneracy, generated by geometrical frustration. A triangle with antiferromagnetic energy has minimum energy : if , the apex must have the opposite sign; if , either apex sign is permitted. The two all-equal configurations instead have energy . Thus exactly one of a minimum-energy triangle's bonds is frustrated. The bridge can simultaneously minimize its energy at by requiring , where is the next cell's first base spin.
For fixed and , the number of allowed apex choices is therefore two when and one when . The zero-temperature counting transfer matrix on successive first base spins is
The eigenvalues of are and . Dividing by the sites and taking the thermodynamic limit gives , independently confirming the derivative calculation. This does not assert a unique ordered ground state: the extensive choice of frustrated bonds is precisely what leaves entropy at zero temperature. At high temperature, all Ising spins become independent and per site.
In the basis the transfer matrix and its eigenvalues are
For finite positive temperature, and . Consequently and in the thermodynamic limit. There are spins, so the Helmholtz free energy per spin is
The factor is essential: one transfer matrix step counts two spins. For completeness, if the undefined is retained, set , and . The same thermodynamic limit gives whenever these are two distinct spin values.