Describing time-dependent many-body systems where correlation effects play an important role remains a major theoretical challenge. In this paper we develop a time-dependent many-body theory that is based on the two-particle reduced density matrix (2
-RDM). We develop a closed equation of motion for the 2-RDM employing a novel reconstruction functional for the three-particle reduced density matrix (3-RDM) that preserves norm, energy, and spin symmetries during time propagation. We show that approximately enforcing $N$-representability during time evolution is essential for achieving stable solutions. As a prototypical test case which features long-range Coulomb interactions we employ the one-dimensional model for lithium hydride (LiH) in strong infrared laser fields. We probe both one-particle observables such as the time-dependent dipole moment and two-particle observables such as the pair density and mean electron-electron interaction energy. Our results are in very good agreement with numerically exact solutions for the $N$-electron wavefunction obtained from the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree-Fock method.
We investigate the elastic scattering of Bose-Einstein condensates at shallow periodic and disorder potentials. We show that the collective scattering of the macroscopic quantum object couples to internal degrees of freedom of the Bose-Einstein conde
nsate such that the Bose-Einstein condensate gets depleted. As a precursor for the excitation of the Bose-Einstein condensate we observe wave chaos within a mean-field theory.
We present a semiclassical approximation to the scattering wavefunction $Psi(mathbf{r},k)$ for an open quantum billiard which is based on the reconstruction of the Feynman path integral. We demonstrate its remarkable numerical accuracy for the open r
ectangular billiard and show that the convergence of the semiclassical wavefunction to the full quantum state is controlled by the path length or equivalently the dwell time. Possible applications include leaky billiards and systems with decoherence present.
We study the expansion of repulsively interacting Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) in shallow one-dimensional potentials. We show for these systems that the onset of wave chaos in the Gross-Pitaevskii equation (GPE), i.e. the onset of exponential sep
aration in Hilbert space of two nearby condensate wave functions, can be used as indication for the onset of depletion of the BEC and the occupation of excited modes within a many-body description. Comparison between the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree for bosons (MCTDHB) method and the GPE reveals a close correspondence between the many-body effect of depletion and the mean-field effect of wave chaos for a wide range of single-particle external potentials. In the regime of wave chaos the GPE fails to account for the fine-scale quantum fluctuations because many-body effects beyond the validity of the GPE are non-negligible. Surprisingly, despite the failure of the GPE to account for the depletion, coarse grained expectation values of the single-particle density such as the overall width of the atomic cloud agree very well with the many-body simulations. The time dependent depletion of the condensate could be investigated experimentally, e.g., via decay of coherence of the expanding atom cloud.
The Gross-Pitaevskii equation (GPE) plays an important role in the description of Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) at the mean-field level. The GPE belongs to the class of non-linear Schrodinger equations which are known to feature dynamical instabil
ity and collapse for attractive non-linear interactions. We show that the GPE with repulsive non-linear interactions typical for BECs features chaotic wave dynamics. We find positive Lyapunov exponents for BECs expanding in periodic and aperiodic smooth external potentials as well as disorder potentials. Our analysis demonstrates that wave chaos characterized by the exponential divergence of nearby initial wavefunctions is to be distinguished from the notion of non-integrability of non-linear wave equations. We discuss the implications of these observations for the limits of applicability of the GPE, the problem of Anderson localization, and the properties of the underlying many-body dynamics.
