Exact surface-wave spectrum of a dilute quantum liquid

Abstract

We consider a dilute gas of bosons with repulsive contact interactions, described on the mean-field level by the Gross-Pitaevski\ifmmode \check{i}\else \v{i}\fi{} equation, and bounded by an impenetrable ``hard'' wall (either rigid or flexible). We solve the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations for excitations on top of the Bose-Einstein condensate analytically, by using matrix-valued hypergeometric functions. This leads to the exact spectrum of gapless Bogoliubov excitations localized near the boundary. The dispersion relation for the surface excitations represents for small wave numbers $k$ a ripplon mode with fractional power law dispersion for a flexible wall, and a phonon mode (linear dispersion) for a rigid wall. For both types of excitation we provide, for the first time, the exact dispersion relations of the dilute quantum liquid for all $k$ along the surface, extending to $k\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$. The small wavelength excitations are shown to be bound to the surface with a maximal binding energy $\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Delta}}=\frac{1}{8}{(\sqrt{17}\ensuremath{-}3)}^{2}m{c}^{2}\ensuremath{\simeq}0.158\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}m{c}^{2}$, which both types of excitation asymptotically approach, where $m$ is mass of bosons and $c$ bulk speed of sound. We demonstrate that this binding energy is close to the experimental value obtained for surface excitations of helium II confined in nanopores, reported in Phys. Rev. B 88, 014521 (2013).