Inclusion of finite-temperature effects in a nonlinear description of strongly interacting many-body systems

We consider a class of quantum many-body systems which are coupled by one- and two-body interactions. Following our earlier work on deriving nonlinear field equations of motion for such systems, we incorporate the effects of finite temperature through a semiclassical free energy functional. We first obtain implicit analytical formulas for the entropy density which lend the mselves to simple asymptotic expansions. We then study the effects of entro py in both homogeneous and inhomogeneous regimes. In the former case, criti cal amplitude rescaling, transition temperature shifts and crossover effect s are found. In the latter case, saturation effects are shown to promote th e emergence of spatial periodicities in 1D. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.