Trapped Bose-Einstein Condensates at Finite Temperature: a Two-Gas Model |
| R.J. Dodd Institute for Physical Science and Technology, University of Maryland at College Park, College Park, MD 20742, USA K. Burnett Clarendon Laboratory, Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PU, UK M. Edwards Department of Physics, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA 30460, USA and Ch.W. Clark Electron and Optical Physics Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, USA |
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| A simple picture describes the results of recent treatments of partially-condensed, dilute, trapped Bose gases at temperature T>0. The condensate wave function is nearly identical to that of a T=0 condensate with the same number of condensate atoms, N0. The cloud of non-condensed atoms is described by the statistical mechanics of an ideal Bose gas in the combined potentials of the magnetic trap and the cloud-condensate interaction. We provide a physical motivation for this result, show how it emerges in the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov-Popov approximation, and explore some of its implications for future experiments. |
| DOI: 10.12693/APhysPolA.93.45 PACS numbers: 03.75.Fi, 67.40.Db, 67.90.+z |