An exact stochastic field method for the interacting Bose gas at thermal equilibrium

Abstract

We present a new exact method to numerically compute the thermodynamical properties of an interacting Bose gas in the canonical ensemble. As in our previous paper (Phys. Rev. A, 63 023606 (2001)), we write the density operator $ρ$ as an average of Hartree dyadics $\ketbra{N:ϕ_1}{N:ϕ_2}$ and we find stochastic evolution equations for the wave functions $ϕ_{1,2}$ such that the exact imaginary-time evolution of $ρ$ is recovered after average over noise. In this way, the thermal equilibrium density operator can be obtained for any temperature $T$. The method is then applied to study the thermodynamical properties of a homogeneous one-dimensional $N$-boson system: although Bose-Einstein condensation can not occur in the thermodynamical limit, a macroscopic occupation of the lowest mode of a finite system is observed at sufficiently low temperatures. If $k_B T \gg μ$, the main effect of interactions is to suppress density fluctuations and to reduce their correlation length. Different effects such as a spatial antibunching of the atoms are predicted for the opposite $k_B T\leq μ$ regime. Our exact stochastic calculations have been compared to existing approximate theories.