Ground states of large bosonic systems: the Gross–Pitaevskii limit revisited

Abstract

We study the ground state of a dilute Bose gas in a scaling limit where the Gross–Pitaevskii functional emerges. This is a repulsive nonlinear Schrödinger functional whose quartic term is proportional to the scattering length of the interparticle interaction potential. We propose a new derivation of this limit problem, with a method that bypasses some of the technical difficulties that previous derivations had to face. The new method is based on a combination of Dyson’s lemma, the quantum de Finetti theorem and a second moment estimate for ground states of the effective Dyson Hamiltonian. It applies equally well to the case where magnetic fields or rotation are present.