Critical global thermodynamics of the BEC transition of a harmonically confined weakly interacting Bose gas
I. Reyes-Ayala, Freddy Jackson Poveda-Cuevas, Jorge Amin Seman, Vı́ctor Romero-Rochı́n
Abstract
The critical properties of the phase transition from a normal gas to a BEC (superfluid) of a harmonically confined Bose gas are analyzed using a proposed model for the equation of state of the underlying homogenous Bose fluid. The equation of state is given in terms of the homogenous particle density as a function of the chemical potential and temperature of the gas. On the normal side of the fluid it is assumed to be an ideal Bose gas while in the superfluid state we propose a function that, both, asymptotically reaches the Thomas-Fermi solution of a weakly interacting Bose gas at large densities and low temperatures and, at the transition, matches the critical properties of the ideal Bose gas. With this model we obtain the {\it global} thermodynamics of the harmonically confined gas which shows that, at the critical transition of the confined gas, the thermodynamic susceptibilities, such as the isothermal compressibility, do not diverge, in contrast to the behavior of the uniform gas. The singularity of the critical transition in the confined system appears now at the derivatives of the susceptibilities. We discuss how these properties can be experimentally tested.