Large deviations for trapped interacting Brownian particles and paths (Q850972)

Models of a fixed number \(N\) of trapped interacting Brownian motions given in terms of transformed measures for paths of length \(\beta\) are studied. A trap Hamiltonian, putting ``hard'' or ``soft'' walls, keeps the motions in a bounded region. Basically two different types of pair-interaction Hamiltonians, both imposing mutually repellent interaction, were considered. The first one, which is called the canonical ensemble model, imposes particle-repellency, while the second, called the Hartree model, imposes path-repellency. Namely, in the canonical ensemble model the \(N\) motions interact with each other at common time units, and in the Hartree model, the paths interact with the mean of the paths of the other motions. One of the main results is a large deviation principle for the joint occupation measure of the \(N\)-tuple of the motions in the canonical ensemble model. The rate function is given by the energy of the operator \(H_N\). In particular, a law of large numbers for the occupation measure toward the ground state is proved. The large behavior of the Hartree model is different and is described in terms of the ground product states of \(H_N\), that is, the minimizers of the energy of \(H_N\) among all product states. Next main result is a large deviation principle for the \(N\)-tuple of the occupation measures of the motions. The rate function is the \(H_N\)-energy of the product of the components of the tuple. In particular, a law of large numbers for the occupation measure tuple toward the set of the ground product states is obtained. A mathematical idealization of the Hartree model is discussed too, where the pair-interaction potential is replaced by the Dirac-measure at zero. This model is defined in terms of Brownian intersection local times, an object whose large deviations properties are currently much studied from a probabilistic point of view. Analogous large deviation results for a discrete variant of the model are established. Finally, the ground product states of \(H_N\) in the limit \(N\to\infty\) are also studied. Recently, Lieb et al. [see for example, \textit{E. H. Lieb, R. Seiringer} and \textit{J. Yngvason}, Commun. Math. Phys. 224, 17--31 (2001; Zbl 0996.82010)] described the large-\(N\) behavior of the ground state in terms of the well-known Gross-Pitaevskii formula, involving the scattering length of the pair potential. We prove that the large-\(N\) behavior of the ground product-states is also described by the Gross-Pitaevskii formula, however, with the scattering length of the pair potential replaced by its integral. Note that the paper provides the mathematical basis for the rigorous probabilistic analysis of interacting Brownian motions as models for large quantum particle systems at positive temperature.