Excitation spectrum of a system of interacting bosons

Abstract

The Bogoliubov treatment of a weakly interacting Bose gas is extended by allowing macroscopic occupation of many single-particle quantum states. This generalization of having more than a single condensed mode gives rise to a nonuniform condensate and is being considered as a possible mechanism for the description of a dense strongly interacting Bose gas at low temperatures. The model with a repulsive $\ensuremath{\delta}$-function interparticle potential gives an energy spectrum of elementary excitations or quasiparticles with both phonon and roton features. The values obtained for the roton minimum energy $\ensuremath{\Delta}$ and the speed of (first) sound agree reasonably well with inelastic-neutron-scattering data.