Reduced density matrices and Bose-Einstein condensation

Emergence and applications of the ubiquitous tool of reduced density matrices in the rigorous analysis of Bose Einstein condensation is reviewed, and new related results are added. The need and the nature of scaling limits of infinitely many particles is discussed, which imposes that a physically meaningful and mathematically well-posed definition of asymptotic condensation is placed at the level of marginals. The topic of correlations in the condensed state is addressed in order to show their influence at this level of marginals, both in the true condensed state and in the suitable trial functions one introduces to approximate the many-body structure and energy. Complete condensation is shown to be equivalently defined at any fixed kbody level, both for pure and mixed states. Further, it is proven to be equivalent to some other characterizations in terms of asymptotic factorization of the many-body state, which are currently present in the literature. preprint: SISSA 39/2007/mp