We calculate the Bose-Einstein-condensate (BEC) occupation statistics vs the interparticle interaction in a dilute gas with a nonuniform condensate in a box trap within the Bogoliubov approach. The results are compared against the previously found BEC-occupation statistics in (i) an ideal gas and (ii) a weakly interacting gas with a uniform condensate. In particular, we reveal and explicitly describe an appearance of a nontrivial transition from the ideal gas to the Thomas-Fermi regime. The results include finding the main regimes of the BEC statistics---the anomalous non-Gaussian thermally dominated fluctuations and the Gaussian quantum-dominated fluctuations---as well as a crossover between them and their manifestations in a mesoscopic system. Remarkably, we show that the effect of the boundary conditions, imposed at the box trap, on the BEC fluctuations does not vanish in the thermodynamic limit of a macroscopic system even in the presence of the interparticle interactions. Finally, we discuss a challenging problem of an experimental verification of the theory of the BEC fluctuations addressing a much deeper level of the many-body statistical physics than usually studied quantities related to the mean condensate occupation.
We calculate the Bose-Einstein-condensate (BEC) occupation statistics vs the interparticle interaction in a dilute gas with a nonuniform condensate in a box trap within the Bogoliubov approach. The results are compared against the previously found BEC-occupation statistics in (i) an ideal gas and (ii) a weakly interacting gas with a uniform condensate. In particular, we reveal and explicitly describe an appearance of a nontrivial transition from the ideal gas to the Thomas-Fermi regime. The results include finding the main regimes of the BEC statistics---the anomalous non-Gaussian thermally dominated fluctuations and the Gaussian quantum-dominated fluctuations---as well as a crossover between them and their manifestations in a mesoscopic system. Remarkably, we show that the effect of the boundary conditions, imposed at the box trap, on the BEC fluctuations does not vanish in the thermodynamic limit of a macroscopic system even in the presence of the interparticle interactions. Finally, we discuss a challenging problem of an experimental verification of the theory of the BEC fluctuations addressing a much deeper level of the many-body statistical physics than usually studied quantities related to the mean condensate occupation.
We analytically calculate the statistics of Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) fluctuations in an interacting gas trapped in a three-dimensional cubic or rectangular box with the Dirichlet, fused or periodic boundary conditions within the mean-field Bogoliubov and Thomas-Fermi approximations. We study a mesoscopic system of a finite number of trapped particles and its thermodynamic limit. We find that the BEC fluctuations, first, are anomalously large and non-Gaussian and, second, depend on the trap's form and boundary conditions. Remarkably, these effects persist with increasing interparticle interaction and even in the thermodynamic limit-only the mean BEC occupation, not BEC fluctuations, becomes independent on the trap's form and boundary conditions.
We consider equilibrium canonical-ensemble fluctuations of the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in a trap using the particle-number conserving operator formalism of Girardeau and Arnowitt [Phys. Rev. 113, 755 (1959)] and the concept of the canonical-ensemble quasiparticles. We find explicit expressions for the characteristic function and all cumulants of the ground-state occupation statistics both for the dilute weakly interacting and ideal Bose gases. We present analytical formulas for the moments of the ground-state occupation fluctuations in the weakly interacting and ideal Bose gases in a box (``homogeneous gas'') as well as in the ideal Bose gas in an arbitrary power-law trap, in particular, in an arbitrary harmonic trap. We calculate the effect of Bogoliubov coupling between quasiparticles on suppression of the ground-state occupation fluctuations at moderate temperatures and their enhancement at very low temperatures. We clarify a crossover between ideal-gas and weakly interacting gas statistics, which is governed by a pair-correlation, squeezing mechanism. The important conclusion is that in most cases the ground-state occupation fluctuations are anomalously large and are not Gaussian even in the thermodynamic limit.
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.
Bose-Einstein condensation is a unique phase transition in that it is not driven by interparticle interactions, but can theoretically occur in an ideal gas, purely as a consequence of quantum statistics. This chapter addresses the question, ‘ How is this ideal Bose gas condensation modified in the presence of interactions between the particles?’ This seemingly simple question turns out to be surprisingly difficult to answer. Here we outline the theoretical background to this question and discuss some recent measurements on ultracold atomic Bose gases that have sought to provide some answers. Introduction Unlike the vast majority of phase transitions, Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) is not driven by interparticle interactions but can theoretically occur in an ideal (noninteracting) gas, purely as a consequence of quantum statistics. However, in reality, interactions are needed for a Bose gas to remain close to thermal equilibrium. It is thus interesting to discuss if something close to ideal gas BEC can be observed in a real system and what happens in the vicinity of the BEC transition in the presence of interparticle interactions. These simple questions have not been easy to answer, either theoretically or experimentally. The theoretical foundations for studying the effect of interactions on Bose condensed systems were laid over half a century ago by Bogoliubov [1], Penrose and Onsager [2], and Belieav [3], among others. These works initially focused on zerotemperature properties and were extended to nonzero temperature in the pioneering papers of Lee, Huang, and Yang [4, 5, 6, 7]. At that time, the main experimental system was liquid He-4 in which the inter-particle interactions are strong, making connections with theory difficult. The realisation in 1995 of BEC in weakly interacting ultracold atomic gases [8, 9] thus opened up the possibility to experimentally revisit some of these long-discussed questions. This was further aided by, among other advances, the use of Feshbach resonances to tune the interaction strength in atomic gases [10, 11]. Thus, in the last twenty years the study of ultracold Bose gases has been very successful (see Chapter 3 for an insightful account of selected topics and surprising developments over this exciting period). However, the fact that, until recently, ultracold atoms were confined using harmonic potentials has hindered the study of the BEC transition itself.
We present a new method of calculating the distribution function and fluctuations for a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of N interacting atoms. The present formulation combines our previous master equation and canonical ensemble quasiparticle techniques. It is applicable both for ideal and interacting Bogoliubov BEC and yields remarkable accuracy at all temperatures. For the interacting gas of 200 bosons in a box we plot the temperature dependence of the first four central moments of the condensate particle number and compare the results with the ideal gas. For the interacting mesoscopic BEC, as with the ideal gas, we find a smooth transition for the condensate particle number as we pass through the critical temperature.
We obtain analytical formulas for the statistics, in particular, for the characteristic function and all cumulants, of the Bose-Einstein condensate in dilute weakly interacting and ideal equilibrium gases in the canonical ensemble via the particle-number-conserving operator formalism of Girardeau and Arnowitt. We prove that the ground-state occupation statistics is not Gaussian even in the thermodynamic limit. We calculate the effect of Bogoliubov coupling on suppression of ground-state occupation fluctuations and show that they are governed by a pair-correlation, squeezing mechanism.