Derivation of the nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation from a many body Coulomb system

Abstract

We consider the time evolution of N bosonic particles interacting via a mean field Coulomb potential. Suppose the initial state is a product wavefunction. We show that at any finite time the correlation functions factorize in the limit $N \to \infty$. Furthermore, the limiting one particle density matrix satisfies the nonlinear Hartree equation. The key ingredients are the uniqueness of the BBGKY hierarchy for the correlation functions and a new apriori estimate for the many-body Schr\"odinger equations.