From few to many bosons inside the unitary window: a transition between universal to non-universal behavior

TL;DR

This paper investigates the transition from universal to non-universal behavior in few-boson systems near the unitary limit, introducing a parameter to model this transition and applying it to helium atom systems.

Contribution

It presents a novel simple parameter to describe the smooth transition from universal to non-universal behavior in bosonic systems near unitarity.

Findings

The transition can be modeled with a single control parameter.

Ground state energies of helium atoms follow predictable trajectories within the unitary window.

The approach can estimate energy per particle in large homogeneous systems.

Abstract

Universal behaviour in few-bosons systems close to the unitary limit, where two bosons become unbound, has been intensively investigated in recent years both experimentally and theoretically. In this particular region, called the unitary window, details of the inter-particle interactions are not important and observables, such as binding energies, can be characterized by a few parameters. With an increasing number of particles the short-range repulsion, present in all atomic, molecular or nuclear interactions, gradually induces deviations from the universal behaviour. In the present letter we discuss for the first time a simple way of incorporating non-universal behaviour through one specific parameter which controls the smooth transition of the system from universal to non-universal regime. Using a system of $N$ helium atoms as an example we calculate their ground state energies as trajectories within the unitary window and also show that the control parameters can be used to determine the energy per particle in homogeneous systems when $N \rightarrow \infty$.