Physical Review A
Monte Carlo simulations of Bose-Einstein condensation of trapped atoms
Elena Cerboneschi, Carlo Menchini, E. Arimondo
Abstract
We present a Monte Carlo method for the direct simulation of evaporative cooling and the formation of the Bose-Einstein condensate of magnetically trapped atoms. The motion of the atoms in the trap is treated classically, while quantum-mechanical probability is used to describe binary elastic collisions between bosons. Two implementations of Bose statistics in the frame of a classical Monte Carlo simulation have been developed. The one involves the evaluation of the number of quantum states in single-atom phase space and the other makes use of the quantum degeneracy of energy bands. Both techniques give results compatible with the analytic results for an ideal trapped Bose gas and with the theory of a weakly interacting Bose gas, as concerns the equilibrium condensate fraction. Our simulation method also makes it possible to study the dynamic formation of the condensate, giving characteristic condensation times consistent with the experiments.