Quantum phase transitions in Bose-Einstein condensates from a Bethe ansatz perspective

We investigate two solvable models for Bose-Einstein condensates and extract physical information by studying the structure of the solutions of their Bethe ansatz equations. A careful observation of these solutions for the ground state of both models, as we vary some parameters of the Hamiltonian, suggests a connection between the behavior of the roots of the Bethe ansatz equations and the physical behavior of the models. Then, by the use of standard techniques for approaching quantum phase transition gap, entanglement and fidelity we find that the change in the scenery in the roots of the Bethe ansatz equations is directly related to a quantum phase transition, thus providing an alternative method for its detection. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.