Re-examining the quadratic approximation in theory of a weakly interacting Bose gas with condensate: the role of nonlocal interaction potentials

Mykyta Bulakhov, Alexander Peletminskii, Sergey Peletminskii, Yurii Slyusarenko, Andrii Sotnikov

Published 2018-04-27Version 1

We derive and analyze the coupled equations of quadratic approximation of the Bogoliubov model for a weakly interacting Bose gas. The first equation determines the condensate density as a variational parameter and ensures the minimum of the grand thermodynamic potential. The second one provides a relation between the total number of particles and chemical potential. Their consistent theoretical analysis is performed for a number of model interaction potentials including contact (local) and nonlocal interactions, where the latter provide nontrivial dependencies in momentum space. We demonstrate that the derived equations have no solutions for the local potential, although they formally reproduce the well-known results of the Bogoliubov approach. At the same time, it is shown that these equations have the solutions for physically relevant nonlocal potentials. We show that in the regimes close to experimental realizations with ultracold atoms, the contribution of the terms originating from the quadratic part of the truncated Hamiltonian to the chemical potential can be of the same order of magnitude as from its $c$-number part. Due to this fact, in particular, the spectrum of single-particle excitations in the quadratic approximation acquires a gap. The issue of the gap is also discussed.