Abstract
An investigation is made of the implications that the presence of a Bose condensate (BC) has for the form of the many particle Schroedinger wavefunction. It is shown that many particle wavefunctions of states which contribute to the BC, contain long range structure in the position space of each particle. It follows from the requirement that the wavefunction is single valued that, in the presence of a BC, the angular momentum of each particle must be quantised over macroscopic length scales. The paper thus provides a new and simple proof from first principles, that Bose condensation implies macroscopic quantum behaviour. It is shown that this behaviour can be described in terms of the occupation by each particle of the same single particle-like macroscopic wavefunction. The structure in position space of this wavefunction is investigated, using a well known model of the many particle wavefunction for the ground state of 4He. The model predicts that the probability density of each particle is delocalised in the presence of a BC, occupying all spaces in the sample volume, from which the particle is not excluded by the hard core interaction with other particles.
Similar content being viewed by others
REFERENCES
F. London, Nature 141, 643 (1938).
O. Penrose and L. Onsager, Phys. Rev. 104, 576 (1956).
W. L. Macmillan, Phys. Rev. A 138, 442 (1965). See E. Manoukis, in Momentum Distributions, P. E. Sokol and R. N. Silver (Eds.), Plenum Press, New York (1989), for a recent review of variational calculations in 4He.
D. M. Ceperley and E. L. Pollock, Phys. Rev. Lett. 56, 351 (1986); E. L. Pollock and D. M. Ceperley, Phys. Rev. B 36, 8343 (1987).
D. M. Ceperley, Rev. Mod. Phys. 67, 279 (1995).
V. F. Sears, Phys. Rev. B 28, 5109 (1983).
T. R. Sosnick, W. M. Snow, and P. E. Sokol, Phys. Rev. B 41, 11185 (1990).
P. E. Sokol, Bose Einstein Condensation, A. Griffin and D. W. Snoke (Eds.), Cambridge University Press (1995).
D. R. Tilley and J. Tilley, Superfluidity and Superconductivity, Adam Hilger, New York (1990).
L. D. Landau, J. Phys. Moscow 5, 71 (1941); J. Phys. Moscow 11, 91.
R. P. Feynmann, Phys. Rev. 91, 1291 (1953); 91, 1301 (1953); 94, 262 (1954).
N. N. Bogoliubov, J. Phys. Moscow 11, 23 (1947).
P. C. Hohenberg and P. C. Martin, Ann. Phys. 34, 291 (1965).
S. T. Belaviev, Sov. Phys. JETP 7, 289 (1959).
P. W. Anderson, Rev. Mod. Phys. 38, 298 (1966).
S. K. Ma, H. Gould, and V. K. Wong, Phys. Rev. A 3, 1453 (1971).
V. K. Wong and H. Gould, Ann. Phys. 83, 252 (1974); Phys. Rev. B 14, 3961 (1976).
A. Griffin and T. Cheung, Phys. Rev. A 7, 2086 (1973).
P. Szepfalusy and I. Kondor, Ann. Phys. 82, 1.
A. Griffin, Excitations in a Bose Condensed Liquid, Cambridge University Press (1993), and references therein.
H. R. Glyde, Excitations in Liquid and Solid Helium, Oxford University Press (1994).
L. D. Landau and E. M. Lifshitz, Statistical Physics, 3rd Edition, Pergamon Press (1978), pp. 192–197.
E. Merzbacher, Quantum Mechanics, John Wiley and Sons, New York (1970), Sec. 8.1.
P. Nozieres and D. Pines, Theory of Quantum Fluids, Vol. II, Addison-Wesley (1990), Chapter 4, p. 50, “the neatest way of characterising superfluidity is in terms of irrotational flow, rather than by the absence of resistance.”
D. C. Champeney, Fourier Transforms and Their Physical Applications, Academic Press (1973), Sec. 7.3 and Appendix L.
W. M. Snow, Y. Yang, and P. E. Sokol, Europhys. Lett. 19, 403 (1992), and references therein.
J. H. Root and E. C. Svensson, Physica B 69, 505 (1991).
J. Mayers, J. Low Temp. Phys. 109, 153 (1997).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mayers, J. A New Approach to Bose Condensation and Superfluidity in 4He. J Low Temp Phys 109, 135–152 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-005-0080-6
Received:
Revised:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-005-0080-6