Proof of off-diagonal long-range order in a mean-field trapped Bose gas via the Feynman--Kac formula

TL;DR

This paper analyzes a non-interacting Bose gas in a trap using the Feynman--Kac formula, establishing conditions for off-diagonal long-range order and Bose--Einstein condensation, and relating the condensate to long loops in the Feynman representation.

Contribution

It provides a rigorous derivation of the asymptotics of the reduced one-particle density matrix and characterizes the phase transition for Bose--Einstein condensation in a mean-field setting.

Findings

ODLRO occurs above a certain threshold of a_N

No ODLRO below that threshold

Condensate distribution follows Poisson--Dirichlet distribution for large a_N

Abstract

We consider the non-interacting Bose gas of $N$ bosons in dimension $d\geq 3$ in a trap in a mean-field setting with a vanishing factor $a_N$ in front of the kinetic energy. The choice $a_N=N^{-2/d}$ is the semi-classical setting and was analysed in great detail in a special, interacting case in Deuchert and Seiringer (2021). Using a version of the well-known Feynman--Kac representation and a further representation in terms of a Poisson point process, we derive precise asymptotics for the reduced one-particle density matrix, implying off-diagonal long-range order (ODLRO, a well-known criterion for Bose--Einstein condensation) for $a_N$ above a certain threshold and non-occurrence of ODLRO for $a_N$ below that threshold. In particular, we relate the condensate and its total mass to the amount of particles in long loops in the Feynman--Kac formula, the order parameter that Feynman suggested in Feynman (1953). For $a_N\ll N^{-2/d}$, we prove that all loops have the minimal length one, and for $a_N\gg N^{-2/d}$ we prove 100 percent condensation and identify the distribution of the long-loop lengths as the Poisson--Dirichlet distribution.