Stability and semiclassics in self-generated fields

Abstract

We consider non-interacting particles subject to a fixed external potential $V$ and a self-generated magnetic field $B$. The total energy includes the field energy $\beta \int B^2$ and we minimize over all particle states and magnetic fields. In the case of spin-$1/2$ particles this minimization leads to the coupled Maxwell-Pauli system. The parameter $\beta$ tunes the coupling strength between the field and the particles and it effectively determines the strength of the field. We investigate the stability and the semiclassical asymptotics, $h\to0$, of the total ground state energy $E(\beta, h, V)$. The relevant parameter measuring the field strength in the semiclassical limit is $\kappa=\beta h$. We are not able to give the exact leading order semiclassical asymptotics uniformly in $\kappa$ or even for fixed $\kappa$. We do however give upper and lower bounds on $E$ with almost matching dependence on $\kappa$. In the simultaneous limit $h\to0$ and $\kappa\to\infty$ we show that the standard non-magnetic Weyl asymptotics holds. The same result also holds for the spinless case, i.e. where the Pauli operator is replaced by the Schrödinger operator.