A. V. Chaplik
Quantum generalization of the Thomas - Fermi approach: exactly solvable example


Correct allowing for the interparticle interaction in many-body systems faces considerable mathematical difficulties. The most frequently used approximation in such problems is the mean field approximation (MFA) which neglects fluctuations and the particles are considered as a continuous medium of inhomogeneous density. If, moreover, the system is described by the classical distribution function ( the statistics can be a quantum one) we obtain the well known Thomas - Fermi approach .However there are situations when at least some of the degrees of freedom of the system have to be treated in accord with quantum mechanics. Such examples are electrons in quantum wells or dipolar excitons in an electrostatic trap. In such cases the density of particles appearing in MFA is to be expressed via wave functions of a particle in the effective potential. The latter, in its turn, depends on the wave functions and occupation numbers, so one has to solve a self-consistent problem. In case of a short-range interparticle pair potential (2D gas of dipolar excitons) a nonlinear wave equation arises while for the long-range (Coulomb) pair interaction the corresponding equation becomes integro-differential (nonlocal effects).
Two different systems are considered: bose - gas of dipolar excitons in a ring shape trap and fermi-gas of electrons in a quantum well of a MOS-structure. The trapped excitons are described by the Gross-Pitaevskyi nonlinear equation and for the very simple case of the rectangular potential of the “empty” trap the exact analytical solution is found. The most interesting result of this problem is criterion for existence of bound state in the effective potential ( in the one particle problem a 1D symmetric potential well always contains at least one bound state) . Methodologically instructive is the way of obtaining the eigenvalue of the Gross-Pitaevskyi equation: the ground state energy is found from the normalization condition.
In case of electrons in a quantum well one deals with nonlinear integro-differential equation for which the exact solution is unknown. The direct variational method was used to find the frequency of the intersubband transition. This frequency turned out to be scaled with the electron concentration N as N 23.