The density-functional theory of quantum droplets

Abstract: In quantum droplets, the mean-field energy is comparable to the Lee-Huang-Yang (LHY) energy. In the Bogoliubov theory, the LHY energy of the quantum droplet has an imaginary part, but it is neglected for practical purposes. So far, most theoretical studies of quantum droplets have been based on the extended Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) equation obtained by adding the LHY energy to the GP equation. In this article, we present the density-functional theory of quantum droplets. In our approach, the quantum fluctuations in quantum droplets, as described by an effective action, generate the correlation energy which is real and can be determined self-consistently. Using the density-functional theory, we calculate higher-order corrections to the energy, the quantum depletion fraction, and the excitations of the droplet. Our results for the ground-state energy and the quantum depletion fraction are compared with the Monte Carlo results and good agreement is found. The implications of our theory are discussed.