Bethe Ansatz Solutions and Excitation Gap of the Attractive Bose-Hubbard Model

Abstract

The energy gap between the ground state and the first excited state of the one-dimensional attractive Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian is investigated in connection with directed polymers in random media. The excitation gap Δis obtained by exact diagonalization of the Hamiltonian in the two- and three-particle sectors and also by an exact Bethe Ansatz solution in the two-particle sector. The dynamic exponent z is found to be 2. However, in the intermediate range of the size L where UL~O(1), U being the attractive interaction, the effective dynamic exponent shows an anomalous peak reaching high values of 2.4 and 2.7 for the two- and the three-particle sectors, respectively. The anomalous behavior is related to a change in the sign of the first excited-state energy. In the two-particle sector, we use the Bethe Ansatz solution to obtain the effective dynamic exponent as a function of the scaling variable UL/π. The continuum version, the attractive delta-function Bose-gas Hamiltonian, is integrable by the Bethe Ansatz with suitable quantum numbers, the distributions of which are not known in general. Quantum numbers are proposed for the first excited state and are confirmed numerically for an arbitrary number of particles.