A coordinated wavefunction for the ground state of liquid helium-4

Abstract

We present a variational ansatz for the ground state of a strongly correlated Bose system. This ansatz goes beyond the Jastrow-Feenberg functional form and explicitly enforces coordination shells in the structure of the wavefunction. We apply this ansatz to liquid helium-4 with a simple three-variable parametrization of the pair functions. The optimized wavefunction is found to give an excellent description of the mid-range correlations in the fluid. We also demonstrate the possibility to use this ansatz to study inhomogeneous systems. The phase separation and free surface emerge naturally in this wavefunction, even though it is constructed of short-range two-body functions and does not contain one-body terms. Because no explicit description of the surface is necessary, this provides a powerful description tool for cluster states.