Charged Boson Gas

Abstract

The ground state energy and elementary excitations of a charged gas of bosons at high densities are examined by use of the method developed by Bogoliubov for boson gases. It is conjectured, but not herein established, that this method yields exact results in the high-density limit analogous to those obtained by Gell-Mann and Brueckner, and by Sawada, in the corresponding case of a charged fermion gas. The ground state energy is essentially correlation energy, and is therefore negative, and its magnitude varies as the one-fourth power of the density at high densities. The elementary excitations have for low momenta the energy appropriate to plasma waves, and for high momenta the energy appropriate to single-particle excitation. There is therefore an energy gap, suggesting that the gas is both a superfluid and a superconductor at low temperatures. At low densities the behavior of a charged gas is independent of statistics; hence, such a gap must disappear as the system is expanded.