The Second Order Upper Bound for the Ground Energy of a Bose Gas

TL;DR

This paper establishes a precise upper bound on the ground state energy of a dilute Bose gas, confirming long-standing theoretical predictions and improving previous bounds.

Contribution

The authors construct a variational state that proves the second order upper bound matching the Lee-Yang and Lee-Huang-Yang predictions.

Findings

Confirmed the second order upper bound for ground energy

Improved previous bounds by matching theoretical predictions

Validated the Lee-Yang and Lee-Huang-Yang formulas

Abstract

Consider $N$ bosons in a finite box $\Lambda= [0,L]^3\subset \mathbf R^3$ interacting via a two-body smooth repulsive short range potential. We construct a variational state which gives the following upper bound on the ground state energy per particle \[\bar\lim_{\rho\to0} \bar \lim_{L \to \infty, N/L^3 \to \rho} (\frac{e_0(\rho)- 4 \pi a \rho}{(4 \pi a)^{5/2}(\rho)^{3/2}})\leq \frac{16}{15\pi^2}, \] where $a$ is the scattering length of the potential. Previously, an upper bound of the form $C 16/15\pi^2$ for some constant $C > 1$ was obtained in \cite{ESY}. Our result proves the upper bound of the the prediction by Lee-Yang \cite{LYang} and Lee-Huang-Yang \cite{LHY}.