Quantum hydrodynamics in dilute-gas Bose-Einstein condensates

Anna Minguzzi, Maria Luisa Chiofalo, M. P. Tosi

Peter Engels

Tamás Tasnádi

In this paper the quantum hydrodynamic equation describing the collective, low-energy excitations of a dilute atomic Bose-Einstein gas in a given trapping potential is investigated with the JWKB semiclassical method. In the case of spherically symmetric harmonic confining potential a good agreement is shown between the semiclassical and the exact energy eigenvalues as well as wave functions. It is also demonstrated that for larger quantum numbers the calculation of the semiclassical wave function is numerically more stable than the exact polynomial with large alternating coefficients.

Peter Engels, Collin Atherton

Kersion Huang

We reconcile a long-standing controversy regarding the transition temperature of the Bose-Einstein condensation in a dilute interacting Bose gas, by showing that there is a crossover between ideal gas and interacting gas. The former corresponds to a Knudsen (or collisionless) regime, in which the mean-free-path is much larger than the system dimension, while the latter corresponds to the opposite hydrodynamic regime. The deviation of the transition temperature from that of the non-interacting gas is proportional to the square root of a in the Knudsen regime, and to a in the hydrodynamic regime, where a is the scattering length. This crossover may be observable in a Bose gas trapped in a potential or on an optical lattice.

JiaJia Chang