Reduced Density Matrix Functional Theory for Bosons: Foundations and Applications

Abstract

Density functional theory constitutes the workhorse of modern electronic structure calculations due to its favourable computational cost despite the fact that it usually fails to describe strongly correlated systems. A particularly promising approach to overcome those difficulties is reduced density matrix functional theory (RDMFT): It abandons the complexity of the $N$-particle wave function and at the same time explicitly allows for fractional occupation numbers. It is the goal of this thesis to initiate and establish a bosonic RDMFT for both ground state and excited state energy calculations. Motivated by the Onsager and Penrose criterion which identifies RDMFT as a particularly suitable approach to describe Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs), we derive the universal functional for a homogeneous BEC in the Bogoliubov regime. Remarkably, the gradient of the universal functional is found to diverge repulsively in the regime of complete condensation. This introduces the new concept of a BEC force, which provides a universal explanation for quantum depletion since it is merely based on the geometry of quantum states. In the second part of the thesis, we propose and work out an ensemble RDMFT targeting excitations in bosonic quantum systems. This endeavour further highlights the potential of convex analysis for the development of functional theories in the future. Indeed by resorting to several concepts from convex analysis, we succeeded to provide a comprehensive foundation of $\boldsymbol{w}$-ensemble RDMFT for bosons which is further based on a generalization of the Ritz variational principle and a constrained search formalism. In particular, we solve the emerging $N$-representability problem leading to a generalization of Pauli's famous exclusion principle to bosonic mixed states.