Mobile impurity in a one-dimensional quantum gas: Exact diagonalization in the Bethe Ansatz basis

Abstract

We consider a mobile impurity particle injected into a one-dimensional quantum gas. The time evolution of the system strongly depends on whether the mass of the impurity and the masses of the host particles are equal or not. For equal masses, the model is Bethe Ansatz solvable, but for unequal masses, the model is no longer integrable and the Bethe Ansatz technique breaks down. We construct a controllable numerical method of computing the spectrum of the model with a finite number of host particles, based on exact diagonalization of the Hamiltonian in the truncated basis of the Bethe Ansatz states. We illustrate our approach on a few-body system of 5+1 particles, and trace the evolution of the spectrum depending on the mass ratio of the impurity and the host particles.