Suppression of the quantum-mechanical collapse by repulsive interactions in a quantum gas

Abstract

The quantum-mechanical collapse (alias fall onto the center of particles attracted by potential -1/r^2), or "quantum anomaly", is a well-known issue in the quantum theory. We demonstrate that the mean-field repulsive nonlinearity prevents the collapse and thus puts forward a solution to the quantum-anomaly problem different from that previously developed in the framework of the linear quantum-field theory. This solution may be realized in the 3D or 2D gas of dipolar bosons attracted by a central charge, and in the 2D gas of magnetic dipoles attracted by a current filament. In the 3D setting, the dipole-dipole interactions are also taken into regard, in the mean-field approximation. In lieu of the collapse, the cubic nonlinearity creates a 3D ground state (GS), which does not exist in the respective linear Schroedinger equation (SE). The addition of the harmonic trap gives rise to a tristability, in the case when the SE still does not lead to the collapse. In the 2D setting, the cubic nonlinearity is not strong enough to prevent the collapse; however, the quintic term does it, creating the GS, as well as its counterparts carrying the angular momentum (vorticity). Counter-intuitively, such self-trapped 2D modes exist even in the case of a weakly repulsive potential 1/r^2. In the presence of the harmonic trap, the 2D quintic model with a weakly repulsive central potential 1/r^2 gives rise to three confined modes, the middle one being unstable, spontaneously developing into a breather. In both the 3D and 2D cases, the GS wave functions are found in a numerical form, and also in the form of an analytical approximation, which is asymptotically exact in the limit of the large norm.