Bose-Einstein condensation with attractive boundary conditions

Kishore T. Kapale, Martin Holthaus, Marlan O. Scully

Asaad R. Sakhel, Jonathan L. DuBois, H. R. Glyde

André F. Verbeure

The free Bose gas with attractive boundary conditions is an interesting toy model for the study of Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC), because one has BEC already in one dimension. Here we study for the first time the imperfect Bose gas with these boundary conditions and prove rigorously the occurence of condensation.

Mir Mehedi Faruk, Shovon Biswas

Abstract We study the Casimir effect for a three dimensional system of ideal free massive Bose gas in a slab geometry with Zaremba and anti-periodic boundary conditions. It is found that for these type of boundary conditions the resulting Casimir force is repulsive in nature, in contrast with usual periodic, Dirichlet or Neumann boundary condition where the Casimir force is attractive (Martin and Zagrebnov 2006 Europhys. Lett. 73 15). Casimir forces in these boundary conditions also maintain a power law decay function below condensation temperature and exponential decay function above the condensation temperature albeit with a positive sign, identifying the repulsive nature of the force.

Klaus Kirsten, David J. Toms

Jordan M. Gerton, Ionuţ D. Prodan, Randall G. Hulet +1 more

Summary form only given. Quantum theory predicts that Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of a spatially homogeneous gas with attractive interactions is precluded by a conventional phase transition into either a liquid or solid. When confined to a trap, however, such a condensate can form provided that its occupation number No does not exceed a limiting value. The stability limit is determined by a balance between self-attraction and a repulsion arising from position-momentum uncertainty under conditions of spatial confinement. Near the stability limit, self-attraction can overwhelm the repulsion, causing the condensate to collapse. Growth of the condensate, therefore, is punctuated by intermittent collapses, which are triggered either by macroscopic quantum tunneling or thermal fluctuation. The data presented here are the first direct observations of the growth and collapse of Bose Einstein condensates with attractive interactions.