The Huang-Yang formula for the low-density Fermi gas: upper bound

Abstract

We study the ground state energy of a gas of spin $1/2$ fermions with repulsive short-range interactions. We derive an upper bound that agrees, at low density $ρ$, with the Huang-Yang conjecture. The latter captures the first three terms in an asymptotic low-density expansion, and in particular the Huang-Yang correction term of order $ρ^{7/3}$. Our trial state is constructed using an adaptation of the bosonic Bogoliubov theory to the Fermi system, where the correlation structure of fermionic particles is incorporated by quasi-bosonic Bogoliubov transformations. In the latter, it is important to consider a modified zero-energy scattering equation that takes into account the presence of the Fermi sea, in the spirit of the Bethe-Goldstone equation.