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arXiv:1511.01610 · Physical Review A

Analytical theory of mesoscopic Bose-Einstein condensation in an ideal gas

Vitaly V. Kocharovsky, Vl. V. Kocharovsky

Published Mar 23, 2010• 31 citations
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Abstract

We find the universal structure and scaling of the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) statistics and thermodynamics (Gibbs free energy, average energy, heat capacity) for a mesoscopic canonical-ensemble ideal gas in a trap with an arbitrary number of atoms, any volume, and any temperature, including the whole critical region. We identify a universal constraint-cutoff mechanism that makes BEC fluctuations strongly non-Gaussian and is responsible for all unusual critical phenomena of the BEC phase transition in the ideal gas. The main result is an analytical solution to the problem of critical phenomena. It is derived by, first, calculating analytically the universal probability distribution of the noncondensate occupation, or a Landau function, and then using it for the analytical calculation of the universal functions for the particular physical quantities via the exact formulas which express the constraint-cutoff mechanism. We find asymptotics of that analytical solution as well as its simple analytical approximations which describe the universal structure of the critical region in terms of the parabolic cylinder or confluent hypergeometric functions. The obtained results for the order parameter, all higher-order moments of BEC fluctuations, and thermodynamic quantities perfectly match the known asymptotics outside the critical region for both low and high temperature limits. We suggest two- and three-level trap models of BEC and find their exact solutions in terms of the cutoff negative binomial distribution (which tends to the cutoff gamma distribution in the continuous limit) and the confluent hypergeometric distribution, respectively. Also, we present an exactly solvable cutoff Gaussian model of BEC in a degenerate interacting gas. All these exact solutions confirm the universality and constraint-cutoff origin of the strongly non-Gaussian BEC statistics. We introduce a regular refinement scheme for the condensate statistics approximations on the basis of the infrared universality of higher-order cumulants and the method of superposition and show how to model BEC statistics in the actual traps. In particular, we find that the three-level trap model with matching the first four or five cumulants is enough to yield remarkably accurate results for all interesting quantities in the whole critical region. We derive an exact multinomial expansion for the noncondensate occupation probability distribution and find its high-temperature asymptotics (Poisson distribution) and corrections to it. Finally, we demonstrate that the critical exponents and a few known terms of the Taylor expansion of the universal functions, which were calculated previously from fitting the finite-size simulations within the phenomenological renormalization-group theory, can be easily obtained from the presented full analytical solutions for the mesoscopic BEC as certain approximations in the close vicinity of the critical point.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.81.033615

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We find the universal structure and scaling of the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) statistics and thermodynamics (Gibbs free energy, average energy, heat capacity) for a mesoscopic canonical-ensemble ideal gas in a trap with an arbitrary number of atoms, any volume, and any temperature, including the whole critical region. We identify a universal constraint-cutoff mechanism that makes BEC fluctuations strongly non-Gaussian and is responsible for all unusual critical phenomena of the BEC phase transition in the ideal gas. The main result is an analytical solution to the problem of critical phenomena. It is derived by, first, calculating analytically the universal probability distribution of the noncondensate occupation, or a Landau function, and then using it for the analytical calculation of the universal functions for the particular physical quantities via the exact formulas which express the constraint-cutoff mechanism. We find asymptotics of that analytical solution as well as its simple analytical approximations which describe the universal structure of the critical region in terms of the parabolic cylinder or confluent hypergeometric functions. The obtained results for the order parameter, all higher-order moments of BEC fluctuations, and thermodynamic quantities perfectly match the known asymptotics outside the critical region for both low and high temperature limits. We suggest two- and three-level trap models of BEC and find their exact solutions in terms of the cutoff negative binomial distribution (which tends to the cutoff gamma distribution in the continuous limit) and the confluent hypergeometric distribution, respectively. Also, we present an exactly solvable cutoff Gaussian model of BEC in a degenerate interacting gas. All these exact solutions confirm the universality and constraint-cutoff origin of the strongly non-Gaussian BEC statistics. We introduce a regular refinement scheme for the condensate statistics approximations on the basis of the infrared universality of higher-order cumulants and the method of superposition and show how to model BEC statistics in the actual traps. In particular, we find that the three-level trap model with matching the first four or five cumulants is enough to yield remarkably accurate results for all interesting quantities in the whole critical region. We derive an exact multinomial expansion for the noncondensate occupation probability distribution and find its high-temperature asymptotics (Poisson distribution) and corrections to it. Finally, we demonstrate that the critical exponents and a few known terms of the Taylor expansion of the universal functions, which were calculated previously from fitting the finite-size simulations within the phenomenological renormalization-group theory, can be easily obtained from the presented full analytical solutions for the mesoscopic BEC as certain approximations in the close vicinity of the critical point.
Paper is published in J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 43 (2010) 225001, doi:10.1088/1751-8113/43/22/225001. Exact analytical solution for the universal probability distribution of the order parameter fluctuations as well as for the universal statistical and thermodynamic functions of an ideal gas in the whole critical region of Bose-Einstein condensation is obtained. A universal constraint nonlinearity is found that is responsible for all nontrivial critical phenomena of the BEC phase transition. Simple analytical approximations, which describe the universal structure of the critical region in terms of confluent hypergeometric or parabolic cylinder functions, as well as asymptotics of the exact solution are derived. The results for the order parameter, all higher-order moments of BEC fluctuations, and thermodynamic quantities, including specific heat, perfectly match the known asymptotics outside critical region as well as the phenomenological renormalization-group ansatz with known critical exponents in the close vicinity of the critical point. Thus, a full analytical solution to a long-standing problem of finding a universal structure of the lambda-point for BEC in an ideal gas is found.
The mesoscopic effects in the quantum trapped gases of the Bose atoms constitute\nthe main subject of the present thesis. These effects are the most difficult for\nthe theoretical analysis in the quantum statistical physics since they can’t be seen by\nneither a standard quantum mechanics of the simple microscopic systems of one or\nvery few atoms nor a standard statistical physics of the macroscopic systems that are\ninfinite in the bulk (thermodynamic) limit.\nMost of the experiments on the cold quantum gases performed in the last decade,\nstarting from the first demonstration of BEC in 1995, involve the mesoscopic systems\nof a finite number of atoms. The mesoscopic effects should manifest themselves most\nclearly and easily near a critical temperature of BEC; however, they could be observed\nalso above and below the critical temperature.\nHere I study the quantum and thermal fluctuations of the Bose-Einstein condensate\n(BEC) in a box with the periodic boundary conditions under a particle-number\nconstraint. The above constraint is the only reason for the BEC and is crucial for the\nmesoscopic effects in the BEC fluctuations, especially in the vicinity of the critical\ntemperature in the Bose gas.\nI employ the particle-number conserving operator formalism of Girardeau and\nArnowitt introduced in 1959 to analyze the canonical ensemble fluctuations. I present\nanalytical formulas and numerical calculations for the central moments of the ground\nstate occupation fluctuations in an ideal Bose gas in a box with a mesoscopic number of particles.\nI present the analysis of the BEC statistics both on a temperature at a fixed\nnumber of particles and on a number of particles at a fixed temperature. Both analyses\nare valid for the purpose of understanding the important mesoscopic effects near the\ncritical temperature. I emphasize the non-Gaussian nature of the fluctuations.\nThe presented formalism can be generalized to the case of a weakly interacting\nBose gas in a box in the framework of the Bogoliubov approximation. The work in\nthis direction is in progress but is not included in the present thesis.
The analytical theory of Bose–Einstein condensation of an ideal gas in mesoscopic systems has been briefly reviewed in application to traps with arbitrary shapes and dimension. This theory describes the phases of the classical gas and the formed Bose–Einstein condensate, as well as the entire vicinity of the phase transition point. The statistics and thermodynamics of Bose–Einstein condensation have been studied in detail, including their self-similar structure in the critical region, transition to the thermodynamic limit, effect of boundary conditions on the properties of a system, and nonequivalence of the description of Bose–Einstein condensation in different statistical ensembles. The complete classification of universality classes of Bose–Einstein condensation has been given.
We present a correlated many-body approach to calculate the distribution function and fluctuations for a Bose-Einstein condensate with NNN interacting atoms in the harmonic confinement. The present formulation uses the recursion relation for the canonical ensemble partition function (Z)(Z)(Z). ZZZ is calculated from the energy spectrum of the many-body effective potential, which keeps all possible two-body correlations and uses the realistic interatomic interaction. The condensate statistics are in very good agreement with earlier results of an ideal gas for which exact statistical moments for all temperature are known. We also present the numerical results of condensate statistics for real experimental situations. The calculated moments nicely exhibit the mesoscopic effect for a few hundred atoms, whereas the sharp fall in the variance for the large condensate near the critical temperature shows the possibility of phase transition. We also calculate the critical temperature for the mesoscopic regime. Our present calculation mimics the JILA experiment with 87Rb^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb atoms.
This paper presents a study of the grand canonical Bose-Einstein (BE) statistics for a finite number of particles in an arbitrary quantum system. The thermodynamical quantities that identify BE condensation---namely, the fraction of particles in the ground state and the specific heat---are calculated here exactly in terms of temperature and fugacity. These calculations are complemented by a numerical calculation of fugacity in terms of the number of particles, without taking the thermodynamic limit. The main advantage of this approach is that it does not rely on approximations made in the vicinity of the usually defined critical temperature, rather it makes calculations with arbitrary precision possible, irrespective of temperature. Graphs for the calculated thermodynamical quantities are presented in comparison to the results previously obtained in the thermodynamic limit. In particular, it is observed that for the gas trapped in a three-dimensional box, the derivative of specific heat reaches smaller values than what was expected in the thermodynamic limit---here, this result is also verified with analytical calculations. This is an important result for understanding the role of the thermodynamic limit in phase transitions and makes possible to further study BE statistics without relying neither on the thermodynamic limit nor on approximations near critical temperature.