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arXiv:2404.17300 · Entropy

Canonical vs. Grand Canonical Ensemble for Bosonic Gases under Harmonic Confinement

A. Crisanti, Luca Salasnich, Alessandro Sarracino, Marco Zannetti

Published Apr 26, 2024• 4 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We analyze the general relation between canonical and grand canonical ensembles in the thermodynamic limit. We begin our discussion by deriving, with an alternative approach, some standard results first obtained by Kac and coworkers in the late 1970s. Then, motivated by the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of trapped gases with a fixed number of atoms, which is well described by the canonical ensemble and by the recent groundbreaking experimental realization of BEC with photons in a dye-filled optical microcavity under genuine grand canonical conditions, we apply our formalism to a system of non-interacting Bose particles confined in a two-dimensional harmonic trap. We discuss in detail the mathematical origin of the inequivalence of ensembles observed in the condensed phase, giving place to the so-called grand canonical catastrophe of density fluctuations. We also provide explicit analytical expressions for the internal energy and specific heat and compare them with available experimental data. For these quantities, we show the equivalence of ensembles in the thermodynamic limit.

DOI
10.3390/e26050367

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We analyze the general relation between canonical and grand canonical ensembles in the thermodynamic limit. We begin our discussion by deriving, with an alternative approach, some standard results first obtained by Kac and coworkers in the late 1970s. Then, motivated by the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of trapped gases with a fixed number of atoms, which is well described by the canonical ensemble and by the recent groundbreaking experimental realization of BEC with photons in a dye-filled optical microcavity under genuine grand canonical conditions, we apply our formalism to a system of non-interacting Bose particles confined in a two-dimensional harmonic trap. We discuss in detail the mathematical origin of the inequivalence of ensembles observed in the condensed phase, giving place to the so-called grand canonical catastrophe of density fluctuations. We also provide explicit analytical expressions for the internal energy and specific heat and compare them with available experimental data. For these quantities, we show the equivalence of ensembles in the thermodynamic limit.
Abstract The grand canonical catastrophe—characterized by order-unity relative fluctuations of the ground-state occupation in the grand canonical ensemble (GCE) at low temperatures—is a hallmark of ensemble inequivalence in ideal Bose gases and has been observed in photon Bose–Einstein condensates. In this work, we investigate an alternative class of observables defined via conditional ensemble averages , namely ⟨ n 0 / N ⟩ and ⟨ δ n 0 2 / N 2 ⟩ , where the average excludes the empty-system sector ( N = 0 ). Using the exactly solvable model of an ideal Bose gas in a one-dimensional harmonic trap, we show that these conditional averages reproduce microcanonical predictions even for modest particle numbers ( N ∼ 10 ) and exhibit vanishing relative fluctuations as temperature approaches zero. We stress that this does not contradict the standard GCE result ⟨ δ n 0 2 ⟩ → ⟨ N ⟩ 2 , which remains thermodynamically valid for open systems. Instead, our framework provides a natural description for experimental scenarios involving post-selection or implicit conditioning on non-empty realizations—common in few-body quantum gas experiments. Thus, the absence of large fluctuations in these conditional averages reflects a change in the observable, not a failure of ensemble theory.
Abstract Particle fluctuations in systems, exhibiting Bose–Einstein condensation, are reviewed in order to clarify the basic points that attract high interest and often confront misunderstanding. It is explained that the so-called ‘grand canonical catastrophe’, claiming the occurrence of catastrophic particle fluctuations in the condensed phase, treated by grand canonical ensemble, does not exist. What exists is the incorrect use of the grand canonical ensemble, where gauge symmetry is not broken, while the correct description of the condensed phase necessarily requires gauge symmetry breaking. The ideal Bose gas has no catastrophic condensate fluctuations, and moreover there are no condensate fluctuations at all, as soon as gauge symmetry is broken. However it does have anomalous fluctuations of uncondensed particles, which implies its instability. For interacting particles, there are no condensate fluctuations, as soon as gauge symmetry is broken, and anomalous fluctuations of uncondensed particles, when correctly calculated, do not appear. Particle fluctuations in the systems of trapped atoms are discussed. Canonical ensemble and grand canonical ensemble with broken gauge symmetry are equivalent with respect to the number of particle scaling.
Grand-canonical fluctuations of Bose-Einstein condensates of light are accessible to state-of-the-art experiments [J. Schmitt et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 030401 (2014).PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.112.030401]. We phenomenologically describe these fluctuations by using the grand-canonical ensemble for a weakly interacting Bose gas at thermal equilibrium. For a two-dimensional harmonic trap, we use two models for which the canonical partition functions of the weakly interacting Bose gas are given by exact recurrence relations. We find that the grand-canonical condensate fluctuations for weakly interacting Bose gases vanish at zero temperature, thus behaving qualitatively similarly to an ideal gas in the canonical ensemble (or microcanonical ensemble) rather than the grand-canonical ensemble. For low but finite temperatures, the fluctuations remain considerably higher than for the canonical ensemble, as predicted by the ideal gas in the grand-canonical ensemble, thus clearly showing that we are not in a regime in which the ensembles are equivalent.
Abstract This chapter describes the mechanism of Bose–Einstein condensation in the simplest ideal Bose gas case. An explicit expression for the critical temperature is derived in the analytically soluble case of a gas confined in a box. Various thermodynamic quantities are calculated above and below the critical temperature. Emphasis is given to the isothermal compressibility which diverges below the critical temperature. The behaviour of the off-diagonal one-body density matrix is discussed. Results for the fluctuations of the single-particle occupation numbers are derived in both the canonical and grand canonical ensembles.
Abstract In this article a system containing two species of identical bosons interacting via a harmonic oscillator potential is considered. It is assumed that the number of bosons of each species is the same and that bosons belonging to the same species repel each other while those belonging to different species attract. The Hamiltonian is diagonalized and the energy spectrum of the system is written down. The behaviour of the system in the thermodynamic limit is studied within the framework of the grand canonical ensemble, and thermodynamic parameters, such as the internal energy, entropy and specific heat capacity are calculated. It is shown that the system exhibits a single species Bose–Einstein condensation when the coupling strengths are equal and a dual species condensation when they are different.
Abstract In two-dimensional traps, since the theoretical study of Bose–Einstein condensation will encounter the problem of divergence, the actual contribution of the divergent terms is often estimated in some indirect ways with the accuracy to the leading order. In this paper, by using an analytical continuation method to solve the divergence problem, we obtain the analytical expressions of critical temperature and condensate fraction for Bose gases in a 2D anisotropic box and harmonic trap, respectively. They are consistent with or better than previous studies. Then, we further consider the nonvanishing chemical potential, and obtain the expressions of chemical potential and more precise condensate fraction. These results agree with the numerical calculation well, especially for the case of harmonic traps. The comparison between the grand canonical and canonical ensembles shows that our calculation in the grand canonical ensemble is reliable.