Lowest eigenstate of hopping matrix

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Fightfish
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So, I was examining the ground state of a Bose-Hubbard dimer in the negligible interaction limit, which essentially amounts to constructing and diagonalizing a two-site hopping matrix that has the form
[tex] H_{i,i+1}^{(n)} = H_{i+1,i}^{(n)} = - \sqrt{i}\sqrt{n-i+1},[/tex]
with all other elements zero. The superscript [itex]n[/itex] refers to the fixed number of particles present on the dimer, and the dimension of the matrix is given by [itex]n+1[/itex].

Essentially this gives rise to a hollow centrosymmetric tridiagonal matrix. Explicitly, we have:
[tex] H^{(2)} =<br /> \left(<br /> \begin{array}{ccc}<br /> 0 & -\sqrt{2} & 0 \\<br /> -\sqrt{2} & 0 & -\sqrt{2} \\<br /> 0 & -\sqrt{2} & 0 \\<br /> \end{array}<br /> \right)[/tex][tex] H^{(3)} =<br /> \left(<br /> \begin{array}{cccc}<br /> 0 & -\sqrt{3} & 0 & 0 \\<br /> -\sqrt{3} & 0 & -2 & 0 \\<br /> 0 & -2 & 0 & -\sqrt{3} \\<br /> 0 & 0 & -\sqrt{3} & 0 \\<br /> \end{array}<br /> \right)[/tex][tex] H^{(4)} =<br /> \left(<br /> \begin{array}{ccccc}<br /> 0 & -2 & 0 & 0 & 0 \\<br /> -2 & 0 & -\sqrt{6} & 0 & 0 \\<br /> 0 & -\sqrt{6} & 0 & -\sqrt{6} & 0 \\<br /> 0 & 0 & -\sqrt{6} & 0 & -2 \\<br /> 0 & 0 & 0 & -2 & 0 \\<br /> \end{array}<br /> \right)[/tex] and so on.

In examining the unnormalized eigenstate with the lowest (most negative) eigenvalue, there seems to exist a Pascal-triangle-like sequence:
[tex]|\psi_{g}^{(1)}\rangle= [1,1][/tex][tex]|\psi_{g}^{(2)}\rangle= [1,\sqrt{2},1][/tex][tex]|\psi_{g}^{(2)}\rangle= [1,\sqrt{3},\sqrt{3},1][/tex][tex]|\psi_{g}^{(3)}\rangle= [1,\sqrt{4},\sqrt{6},\sqrt{4},1][/tex][tex]|\psi_{g}^{(4)}\rangle= [1,\sqrt{5},\sqrt{10},\sqrt{10},\sqrt{5},1][/tex]
This is highly suggestive that some sort of recurrence relation or mapping to binomial expansion exists; however thus far I have not been successful in trying to extract it. Might some one be able to shed some light on this?
 
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Those entries look like Pascal's triangle (with an additional square root applied).
I don't have a proof, but the numbers all match.
 
mfb said:
Those entries look like Pascal's triangle.
I don't have a proof, but the numbers all match.
Yes, I meant to say Pascal's triangle, but somehow ended up writing Fibonacci lol ><
Anyway, I've edited to original post to fix that error.
 
Probably I kinda presented it in a slightly confusing manner, but the entities that follow the Pascal-triangle pattern are actually the unnormalized coefficients of the eigenvector with the lowest eigenvalue for differing various of [itex](n)[/itex].
 
Oh sorry, I misread your description. Then the proof should not need magic. The i'th component of ##H^{(n)} |\psi_{g}^{(n)}\rangle## is

$$-\sqrt{i-1}\sqrt{n-i+2} \sqrt{{n+1} \choose{ i-1}} + -\sqrt{i}\sqrt{n-i+1} \sqrt{{n+1} \choose {i+1}}$$
and this should be a constant multiple of
$$\sqrt{{n+1} \choose i}$$
plus minus some index errors I made.