The static fluctuation approximation (SFA) is applied to compute the thermodynamic properties of a trapped two-dimensional (2D) interacting hard-sphere (HS) Bose gas in the weakly and strongly interacting regime. A mean-field approach involving a variational wave function is used to compute the mean-field energy as a function of temperature for each harmonic oscillator (HO) state plugged into the SFA technique. In the variational approach, a parameter $\ensuremath{\alpha}$ is introduced into the harmonic oscillator wave function in order to take into account the changes in the width when the repulsive interactions between the bosons are increased. In the weakly interacting regime, below the critical temperature, the total energy of all HO states (evaluated by our model) matches the noninteracting result very well. However, beyond the critical temperature, we ``fit'' our energies to the classical limit for 2D bosons in a trap by using a suitably proposed weighting function. We compare our results to earlier results of mean-field theory. Further, we evaluate the density matrix arising from correlations between the HO orbitals.
We determine the critical temperature of parabolically trapped hard-sphere bosons via path-integral quantum Monte Carlo calculations of the condensate fraction and the specific heat. Contrary to previous predictions, the critical temperature of the weakly interacting gas remains roughly constant with respect to increases in the hard-sphere diameter, and is approximately equal to the critical temperature for ideal bosons. As the hard-sphere diameter is increased further, the critical temperature eventually begins to decrease. We give an explanation for the discrepancy between previous results and those presented here.
The thermodynamics of a free Bose gas with effective temperature scale
T~ and hard-sphere Bose gas with the
T~ scale are studied.
T~ arises as the temperature experienced by a single particle in a quantum gas with 2-body harmonic oscillator interaction
Vosc, which at low temperatures is expected to simulate, almost correctly, the attractive part of the interatomic potential
VHe between
4He atoms. The repulsive part of
VHe is simulated by a hard-sphere (HS) potential. The thermodynamics of this system of HS bosons, with the
T~ temperature scale (HSET), is investigated, first, by the Bogoliubov-Huang method and next by a modified version of this method, which takes approximate account of those terms of the 2-body repulsion which are linear in the zero-momentum Bose operators
a0,a0∗ (originally rejected by Bogoliubov). Theoretical heat capacity
CV(T) exhibits good agreement, below 2.1 K, with the experimental heat capacity graph observed in
4He at saturated vapour pressure. The phase transition to the low-temperature phase, with a Bose-Einstein condensate, occurs in the HSET at $T_λ=$2.17 K, and is accompanied, in the modified HSET version, by a singularity of
CV(T). Other thermal properties of HSET, such as the momentum distribution function, the fraction of atoms in the momentum condensate and normal fluid density, agree qualitatively with those of
4He, but improve those of the free Bose gas.
We evaluate the zero temperature properties and Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of hard sphere bosons in a harmonic trap using Quantum Monte Carlo methods. The chief purpose of this work is to go beyond the dilute limit, to test the limits of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation and related mean field approximations and to explore the role of interactions in determining the zero temperature properties of the trapped Bose gas. The density is increased by adjusting both the number of trapped bosons, N , and the s-wave scattering length, a, to study systems from the highly dilute region corresponding to early experiments in trapped BEC [2, 3] up to liquid He densities and beyond. Rather than relying on the perturbative Bogoliubov approximation (which assumes a large condensate fraction) to describe the condensate, we use the one-body density matrix (OBDM) formulation of BEC so that the properties of the condensate for systems with arbitrarily large interactions may be studied. In this formulation of BEC, condensate properties are obtained by diagonalizing the OBDM and obtaining the corresponding single particle “natural orbitals” and their occupation numbers for the system. The condensate wave function and condensate fraction are then obtained from the single particle orbital(s) with macroscopic occupation (N0 >> 1). Within this framework, we calculate the effects of interactions and increased density on the ground state energy, the density profile, the momentum distribution, the condensate fraction and condensate “wave-function” and several other properties.
Using the energy-momentum relation derived by Brueckner and Sawada, the low-temperature thermodynamical properties of a Bose gas with hard-sphere interaction are investigated. The two cases, (1) when this energy spectrum is similar to that observed in liquid helium II and (2) when it becomes similar to that derived by Lee, Huang, and Yang, are investigated separately. In the first case (where the spectrum exhibits a nonmonotonic character), the analytical derivation of the expressions for the various thermodynamical properties is rendered possible by dividing the momentum range into three suitable intervals such that within each interval the epsilon -p relation can be approximated to a simple algebraic one. The numerical magnitudes of the various parameters characterizing the algebraic relations are calculated for the case of a gas with density equal to that of liquid helium(II) and for three plausible values of the hard-sphere diameter. The calculated results agree qualitatively with those obtained from the experimental study of this liquid. For the second case, expressions are derived for the various macroscopic properties of the assembly in terms of suitable mathematical functions and then are written down in the form of series expansions for the two particular cases of interest. (auth)
We report the effects of interaction on thermodynamic properties of a repulsive Bose-Einstein condensate confined in a harmonic trap by using the correlated potential harmonics expansion method. This many-body technique permits the use of a realistic interactomic interaction, which gives rise to the effective long-range interaction of the condensate in terms of the
s-wave scattering length. We have computed temperature (
T) dependence of the chemical potential, specific heat, condensate fraction, entropy, pressure, and the average energy per particle of a system containing a large number (
A) of
87Rb atoms in the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA) trap. The repulsion among the interacting bosons results in a small but measurable drop of condensate fraction and critical temperature (
Tc), compared to those of a noninteracting condensate. These are in agreement with the experiment. Although all thermodynamic quantities have a strong dependence on
A and to a smaller extent on the interatomic interaction, our numerical calculation appears to show that a thermodynamic quantity per particle follows a universal behavior as a function of
T/Tc. This shows the importance of
Tc for all thermodynamic properties of the condensate. As expected, for
T>Tc, these properties follow those of a trapped noncondensed Bose gas.