We investigate the dispersion of a classical electromagnetic field in a relativistic ideal gas of charged bosons using scalar quantum electrodynamics at finite temperature and charge density. We derive the effective electromagnetic responses and the electromagnetic propagation modes that characterize the gas as a left-handed material with negative effective index of refraction $n_{rm eff}=-1$ below the transverse plasmon frequency. In the condensed phase, we show that the longitudinal plasmon dispersion relation exhibits a roton-type local minimum that disappears at the transition temperature.
We show that a gas of relativistic electrons is a left-handed material at low frequencies by computing the effective electric permittivity and effective magnetic permeability that appear in Maxwells equations in terms of the responses appearing in the constitutive relations, and showing that the former are both negative below the {it same} frequency, which coincides with the zero-momentum frequency of longitudinal plasmons. We also show, by explicit computation, that the photonic mode of the electromagnetic radiation does not dissipate energy, confirming that it propagates in the gas with the speed of light in vacuum, and that the medium is transparent to it. We then combine those results to show that the gas has a negative effective index of refraction $n_{rm eff}=-1$. We illustrate the consequences of this fact for Snells law, and for the reflection and transmission coefficients of the gas.
Ultracold atoms in optical lattices provide a unique opportunity to study Bose- Hubbard physics. In this work we show that by considering a spatially varying onsite interaction it is possible to manipulate the motion of excitations above the Mott phase in a Bose-Hubbard system. Specifically, we show that it is possible to engineer regimes where excitations will negatively refract, facilitating the construction of a flat lens.
In three dimensions, non-interacting bosons undergo Bose-Einstein condensation at a critical temperature, $T_{c}$, which is slightly shifted by $Delta T_{mathrm{c}}$, if the particles interact. We calculate the excitation spectrum of interacting Bose-systems, sup{4}He and sup{87}Rb, and show that a roton minimum emerges in the spectrum above a threshold value of the gas parameter. We provide a general theoretical argument for why the roton minimum and the maximal upward critical temperature shift are related. We also suggest two experimental avenues to observe rotons in condensates. These results, based upon a Path-Integral Monte-Carlo approach, provide a microscopic explanation of the shift in the critical temperature and also show that a roton minimum does emerge in the excitation spectrum of particles with a structureless, short-range, two-body interaction.
We study the dilute and ultracold unitary Bose gas, which is characterized by a universal equation of state due to the diverging s-wave scattering length, under a transverse harmonic confinement. From the hydrodynamic equations of superfluids we derive an effective one-dimensional nonpolynomial Schrodinger equation (1D NPSE) for the axial dynamics which, however, takes also into account the transverse dynamics. Finally, by solving the 1D NPSE we obtain meaningful analytical formulas for the dark (gray and black) solitons of the bosonic system.
We study the excitation spectrum of two-component delta-function interacting bosons confined to a single spatial dimension, the Yang-Gaudin Bose gas. We show that there are pronounced finite-size effects in the dispersion relations of excitations, perhaps best illustrated by the spinon single particle dispersion which exhibits a gap at $2k_F$ and a finite-momentum roton minimum. Such features occur at energies far above the finite volume excitation gap, vanish slowly as $1/L$ for fixed spinon number, and can persist to the thermodynamic limit at fixed spinon density. Features such as the $2k_F$ gap also persist to multi-particle excitation continua. Our results show that excitations in the finite system can behave in a qualitatively different manner to analogous excitations in the thermodynamic limit. The Yang-Gaudin Bose gas is also host to multi-spinon bound states, known as $Lambda$-strings. We study these excitations both in the thermodynamic limit under the string hypothesis and in finite size systems where string deviations are taken into account. In the zero-temperature limit we present a simple relation between the length $n$ $Lambda$-string dressed energies $epsilon_n(lambda)$ and the dressed energy $epsilon(k)$. We solve the Yang-Yang-Takahashi equations numerically and compare to the analytical solution obtained under the strong couple expansion, revealing that the length $n$ $Lambda$-string dressed energy is Lorentzian over a wide range of real string centers $lambda$ in the vicinity of $lambda = 0$. We then examine the finite size effects present in the dispersion of the two-spinon bound states by numerically solving the Bethe ansatz equations with string deviations.