Superfluidity of a hydrogenlike gas in a strong magnetic field

Matter in Strong Magnetic Field: Superfluidity of a Hydrogenlike Gas

“…The large binding energy of the hydrogen atom in a strong magnetic field, the small characteristic size, and at last the very weak pair interaction in the ground mplet state admit a phase transition into a superfluid state in a dilute gas of such atoms [9]. In what follows, we shall hold this view, assuming that the ground state of the gas is a Bose condensate at low temperature.…”

“…The solution of the problem of excitonic interaction for a direct gap semiconductor in its multi-electron formulation was obtained in [ 13,141, starting from the second-quantization representation of the Hamiltonian of the system of interacting electrons and holes in a high magnetic field. The expressions for the ground-state energy, the chemical potential, and the spectrum of elementary excitations of the system were obtained in a linear approximation in the concentration of excitons.…”

Superfluidity of Hydrogenlike Gas in a Strong Magnetic Field?

“…This is an interesting result as it potentially provides another system besides liquid He that displays Bose-Einstein condensation. However, the authors [1,2] failed to identify the strong covalent bonding mechanism for forming hydrogen molecule in strong magnetic field [3,4], which makes the Bose-Einstein condensation rather unlikely.For definiteness, I consider the electron-proton system. For excitons in semiconductors, the results (to the leading order) can be rescaled by introducing the effective electron mass and the dielectric constant of the medium.The atomic unit (a.u.)…”

“…Thus the groundstate binding energy |E 0 | ≃ 0.16(ln b) 2 can be much larger than Rydberg when b >> 1.Since the electron spins in the atoms are all aligned antiparallel to the magnetic field, two atoms in their ground states (m = ν = 0) cannot easily bind together to form a molecule according to the exclusion principle. Approximate calculations [2] indicate that the interaction between two ground-state hydrogen atoms is very weak (However, this calculation underestimates the binding energy because it neglects the overlapping of the electron wavefunctions. Recent calculations [5] indicate that the binding energy is much larger than the result of [2]).…”

“…Approximate calculations [2] indicate that the interaction between two ground-state hydrogen atoms is very weak (However, this calculation underestimates the binding energy because it neglects the overlapping of the electron wavefunctions. Recent calculations [5] indicate that the binding energy is much larger than the result of [2]). This formed the basis of the claim in [1] that hydrogenlike gas can become superfluid: because of the weak interatomic interaction, the system remains in the gaseous phase even at low temperature and high density, hence Bose-Einstein condensation may eventually sets in as temperature decreases or density increases.However, these is another mechanism by which tightlybound hydrogen molecule can form in strong magnetic field [3,4]: One of the atom is first excited to a m > 0 state; then the two atoms, one in the ground m = 0 state, another in the m = 1 state, can easily form a spintriplet molecule by covalent bonding along the magnetic field direction.…”