Recent Work on Bose–Einstein Condensation

O. Lenoble, Leonid Andreevich Pastur, Valentin Anatol'evich Zagrebnov

We present a rigorous study of the perfect Bose-gas in the presence of a homogeneous ergodic random potential. It is demonstrated that the Lifshitz tail behaviour of the one-particle spectrum reduces the critical dimensionality of the (generalized) Bose–Einstein Condensation (BEC) to d = 1. To tackle the Off-Diagonal Long-Range Order (ODLRO) we introduce the space average one-body reduced density matrix. For a one-dimensional Poisson-type random potential we prove that randomness enhances the exponential decay of this matrix in domain free of the BEC. To cite this article: O. Lenoble et al., C. R. Physique 5 (2004).

Wolfgang Ketterle

Stefano Mancini, Vladimir I. Man’ko

The spectrum of light scattered from a Bose–Einstein condensate is studied in the limit of particle-number conservation. To this end, a description in terms of deformed bosons is invoked and this leads to a deviation from the usual predict spectrum’s shape as soon as the number of particles decreases. PACS number(s): 03.65.Fd (Algebraic methods), 03.75.Fi (Bose condensation), 42.50.Ct (Quantum statistical description of interaction of light and matter) 1 The recent achievements of Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) with a gas of atoms confined by a magnetic trap [1] has stimulated renewed interest in the question as to what signatures Bose–Einstein condensation imprints in the spectrum of light scattered from atoms in such a condensate [2, 3]. As well known, to deal with the dynamics of BEC gas the Bogolubov approximation in quantum many-body theory [4] is an efficient approach, in which the creation

Wolfgang Ketterle

H.‐J. Miesner

Jan Klaers, Martin Weitz

We review recent experiments on the Bose-Einstein condensation of photons in a dye-filled optical microresonator. The most well-known example of a photon gas, photons in blackbody radiation, does not show Bose-Einstein condensation. Instead of massively populating the cavity ground mode, photons vanish in the cavity walls when they are cooled down. The situation is different in an ultrashort optical cavity imprinting a low-frequency cutoff on the photon energy spectrum that is well above the thermal energy. The latter allows for a thermalization process in which both temperature and photon number can be tuned independently of each other or, correspondingly, for a nonvanishing photon chemical potential. We here describe experiments demonstrating the fluorescence-induced thermalization and Bose-Einstein condensation of a two-dimensional photon gas in the dye microcavity. Moreover, recent measurements on the photon statistics of the condensate, showing Bose-Einstein condensation in the grand-canonical ensemble limit, will be reviewed. Introduction Quantum statistical effects become relevant when a gas of particles is cooled, or its density is increased, to the point where the associated de Broglie wavepackets spatially overlap. For particles with integer spin (bosons), the phenomenon of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) then leads to macroscopic occupation of a single quantum state at finite temperatures [1]. Bose-Einstein condensation in the gaseous case was first achieved in 1995 by laser and subsequent evaporative cooling of a dilute cloud of alkali atoms [2, 3, 4], as detailed in Chapter 3 of this volume. The condensate atoms can be described by a macroscopic singleparticle wavefunction, similar to the case of liquid helium [1]. Bose-Einstein condensation has also been observed for exciton-polaritons, which are hybrid states of matter and light [5, 6, 7] (see Chapter 4), magnons [8] (see Chapter 25), and other physical systems. Other than material particles, photons usually do not show Bose-Einstein condensation [9]. In blackbody radiation, the most common Bose gas, photons at low temperature disappear, instead of condensing to a macroscopically occupied ground-state mode. In this system, photons have a vanishing chemical potential, meaning that the number of photons is determined by the available thermal energy and cannot be tuned independently from temperature.