Ground-state Bethe root densities and quantum phase transitions

TL;DR

This paper analyzes ground-state Bethe root densities in exactly solvable Bose--Einstein condensate models to identify quantum phase transitions and derive related physical quantities.

Contribution

It extends the Bethe root density approach to two specific Bose--Einstein condensate models, providing analytic expressions and clear phase transition indicators.

Findings

Identification of quantum phase transitions via root density changes

Analytic expressions for ground-state energy and correlation functions

Characterization of condensate fragmentation

Abstract

Exactly solvable models provide a unique method, via qualitative changes in the distribution of the ground-state roots of the Bethe Ansatz equations, to identify quantum phase transitions. Here we expand on this approach, in a quantitative manner, for two models of Bose--Einstein condensates. The first model deals with the interconversion of bosonic atoms and molecules. The second is the two-site Bose--Hubbard model, widely used to describe tunneling phenomena in Bose--Einstein condensates. For these systems we calculate the ground-state root density. This facilitates the determination of analytic forms for the ground-state energy, and associated correlation functions through the Hellmann--Feynman theorem. These calculations provide a clear identification of the quantum phase transition in each model. For the first model we obtain an expression for the molecular fraction expectation value. For the two-site Bose--Hubbard model we find that there is a simple characterisation of condensate fragmentation.