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Journal of Physics B Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics

Two-gas description of dilute Bose-Einstein condensates at finite temperature

R. J. Dodd, Mark Edwards, Charles W. Clark

Published Aug 13, 1999• 9 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We show that recent treatments of magnetically trapped Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) at temperature T >0 fit a simple picture: the condensate wavefunction is that of a T = 0 BEC with the appropriate (depleted) number of condensate atoms N 0 , and the surrounding thermal cloud is described by the statistical mechanics of an ideal gas in the combined potentials of the magnetic trap and the cloud-condensate interaction. Even a simple classical description of the cloud reproduces its essential outline, and facilitates easy approximate calculations of BEC properties for T >0.

DOI
10.1088/0953-4075/32/16/310

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We show that recent treatments of magnetically trapped Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) at temperature T >0 fit a simple picture: the condensate wavefunction is that of a T = 0 BEC with the appropriate (depleted) number of condensate atoms N 0 , and the surrounding thermal cloud is described by the statistical mechanics of an ideal gas in the combined potentials of the magnetic trap and the cloud-condensate interaction. Even a simple classical description of the cloud reproduces its essential outline, and facilitates easy approximate calculations of BEC properties for T >0.
A simple picture describes the results of recent treatments of partially--condensed, dilute, trapped Bose gases at temperature T > 0. The condensate wave function is nearly identical to that of a T = 0 condensate with the same number of condensate atoms, Ν0.The cloud of non-condensed atoms is described by the statistical mechanics of an ideal Bose gas in the com- bined potentials of the magnetic trap and the cloud-condensate interaction.We provide a physical motivation for this result, show how it emerges in the Hartree-Fock-Bogo liubov-Popov approximation, and explore some of its implications for future experiments.
We analyse numerically the finite-temperature behaviour of a dilute trapped Bose gas containing a large number of atoms. The generalized Hartree–Fock–Bogoliubov approximation is used to take into account the mutual interactions between the condensate and the thermal cloud. We confront our results with recent experiments and literature and explain in particular the experimentally observed departure from the Thomas–Fermi regime for the condensate radius and the aspect ratio. This clearly illustrates the compression effect of the thermal cloud on the condensate.
Present experiments with Bose condensed gases can be largely described by a semi-ideal two-gas model. In this model, the condensate is influenced only by the mean-field repulsion among condensed atoms, while the thermal cloud is considered an ideal gas confined by an effective potential that consists of the external trap and the mean-field repulsion by the condensate. This simple, intuitive model provides explicit analytical expressions for the density distributions of the condensate and the thermal component. It describes the reduction of the condensate fraction relative to that of an ideal gas as a consequence of the positive chemical potential due to interactions in the condensate.
In light of the recent experimental observation of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute 87Rb{}^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb gas cooled to nanokelvin-scale temperatures, we give a quantitative account of the ground-state properties of magnetically trapped Bose gases. Using simple scaling arguments, we show that at large particle number the kinetic energy is a small perturbation, and find a spatial structure of the cloud of atoms and its momentum distribution dependent in an essential way on particle interactions. We also estimate the superfluid coherence length and the critical angular velocity at which vortex lines become energetically favorable.
The fact that two-dimensional interacting trapped systems do not undergo Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC) in the thermodynamic limit, though rigorously proved, is somewhat mysterious because all relevant limiting cases (zero temperature, small atom numbers, noninteracting particles) suggest otherwise. We study the possibility of condensation in finite trapped two-dimensional systems. We first consider the ideal gas, which incorporates the inhomogeneity and finite size of experimental systems and can be solved exactly. A semiclassical self-consistent approximation gives us a feel for the temperature scales; diagonalization of the one-body density matrix confirms that the condensation is into a single state. We squeeze a three-dimensional system and see how it crosses over into two dimensions. Mean-field theory, our main tool for the study of interacting systems, prescribes coupled equations for the condensate and the thermal cloud: the condensate receives a full quantum-mechanical treatment, while the noncondensate is described by different schemes of varying sophistication. We analyze the T = 0 case and its approach to the thermodynamic limit, finding a criterion for the dimensionality crossover and obtaining the coupling constant of the two-dimensional system that results from squeezing a three-dimensional trap. We next apply a semiclassical Hartree-Fock approximation to purely two-dimensional finite gases and find that they can be described either with or without a condensate; this continues to be true in the thermodynamic limit. The condensed solutions have a lower free energy at all temperatures but neglect the presence of phonons within the system and cease to exist when we allow for this possibility. The uncondensed solutions, in turn, are valid under a more rigorous scheme but have consistency problems of their own. Path-integral Monte Carlo simulations provide an essentially exact description of finite interacting gases and enable us to study highly anisotropic systems at finite temperature. We find that our two-dimensional Hartree-Fock solutions accurately mimic the surface density profile and predict the condensate fraction of these systems; the equivalent interaction parameter is smaller than that dictated by the T = 0 analysis. We conclude that, in two-dimensional isotropic finite trapped systems and in highly compressed three-dimensional gases, there is a phenomenon resembling a condensation into a single state.
In this paper we develop a gapless theory of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) which can be applied to both trapped and homogeneous gases at zero and finite temperature. The starting point for the theory is the second quantized, many-body Hamiltonian for a system of structureless bosons with pairwise interactions. A number-conserving approach is used to rewrite this Hamiltonian in a form which is approximately quadratic with higher-order cubic and quartic terms. The quadratic part of the Hamiltonian can be diagonalized exactly by transforming to a quasiparticle basis, while requiring that the condensate satisfy the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. The non-quadratic terms are assumed to have a small effect and are dealt with using first- and second-order perturbation theory. The conventional treatment of these terms, based on factorization approximations, is shown to be inconsistent. Infrared divergences can appear in individual terms of the perturbation expansion, but we show analytically that the total contribution beyond quadratic order is finite. The resulting excitation spectrum is gapless and the energy shifts are small for a dilute gas away from the critical region, justifying the use of perturbation theory. Ultraviolet divergences can appear if a contact potential is used to describe particle interactions. We show that the use of this potential as an approximation to the two-body T -matrix leads naturally to a high-energy renormalization. The theory developed in this paper is therefore well defined at both low and high energy and provides a systematic description of BEC in dilute gases. It can therefore be used to calculate the energies and decay rates of the excitations of the system at temperatures approaching the phase transition.