arXiv:1011.3140 · Physical Review A
Phase transition to Bose-Einstein condensation for a bosonic gas confined in a combined trap
Baolong Lü, Xinzhou Tan, Bing Wang, Lijuan Cao, Hongwei Xiong
Abstract
We present a study of phase transition to macroscopic superfluidity for an ultracold bosonic gas confined in a combined trap formed by a one-dimensional optical lattice and a harmonic potential, focusing on the critical temperature of this system and the interference patterns of the Bose gas released from the combined trap. Based on a semiclassical energy spectrum, we develop an analytic approximation for the critical temperature ${T}_{c}$, and compare the analytic results with that obtained by numerical computations. For finite temperatures below ${T}_{c}$, we calculate the interference patterns for both the normal gas and the superfluid gas. The total interference pattern shows a feature of ``peak on a peak.'' As a comparison, we also present the experimentally observed interference patterns of $^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ atoms released from a one-dimensional optical lattice system in accord with our theoretical model. Our observations are consistent with the theoretical results.