Path integral Monte Carlo approach to the structural properties and collective excitations of liquid $$^3{\text {He}}$$ without fixed nodes

Due to its nature as a strongly correlated quantum liquid, ultracold helium is characterized by the nontrivial interplay of different physical effects. Bosonic $$^4{\text {He}}$$ 4 He exhibits superfluidity and Bose-Einstein condensation. Its physical properties have been accurately determined on the basis of ab initio path integral Monte Carlo (PIMC) simulations. In contrast, the corresponding theoretical description of fermionic $$^3{\text {He}}$$ 3 He is severely hampered by the notorious fermion sign problem, and previous PIMC results have been derived by introducing the uncontrolled fixed-node approximation. In this work, we present extensive new PIMC simulations of normal liquid $$^3{\text {He}}$$ 3 He without any nodal constraints. This allows us to to unambiguously quantify the impact of Fermi statistics and to study the effects of temperature on different physical properties like the static structure factor $$S({\mathbf {q}})$$ S ( q ) , the momentum distribution $$n({\mathbf {q}})$$ n ( q ) , and the static density response function $$\chi ({\mathbf {q}})$$ χ ( q ) . In addition, the dynamic structure factor $$S({\mathbf {q}},\omega )$$ S ( q , ω ) is rigorously reconstructed from imaginary-time PIMC data. From simulations of $$^3{\text {He}}$$ 3 He , we derived the familiar phonon–maxon–roton dispersion function that is well-known for $$^4{\text {He}}$$ 4 He and has been reported previously for two-dimensional $$^3{\text {He}}$$ 3 He films (Nature 483:576–579 (2012)). The comparison of our new results for both $$S({\mathbf {q}})$$ S ( q ) and $$S({\mathbf {q}},\omega )$$ S ( q , ω ) with neutron scattering measurements reveals an excellent agreement between theory and experiment.

Monte Carlo simulations of the electron short-range quantum ordering in Coulomb systems and the “fermionic sign problem”.

To account for the interference effects of the Coulomb and exchange interactions of electrons the new path integral representation of the density matrix has been developed in the canonical ensemble at finite temperatures. The developed representation allows to reduce the notorious ``fermionic sign problem'' in the path integral Monte Carlo simulations of fermionic systems. The obtained results for pair distribution functions in plasma and uniform electron gas demonstrate the short--range quantum ordering of electrons associated in literature with exchange--correlation excitons. The charge estimations show the excitonic electric neutrality. Comparison of the internal energy with available ones in the literature demonstrates that the short range ordering does not give noticeable contributions in integral thermodynamic characteristics. This fine physical effect was not observed earlier in the standard path integral Monte Carlo simulations.