Effects of interactions on Bose-Einstein condensation of an atomic gas

TL;DR

This paper reviews how interactions influence Bose-Einstein condensation in ultracold atomic gases, covering both theoretical and experimental insights into equilibrium and non-equilibrium phenomena.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of the role of interactions in BEC, including effects on condensation mechanisms, critical temperature, and non-equilibrium dynamics in trapped gases.

Findings

Interactions affect the saturation of excited states in BEC.

Interactions influence the critical temperature for condensation.

Non-equilibrium phenomena emerge when equilibrium conditions are violated.

Abstract

The phase transition to a Bose-Einstein condensate is unusual in that it is not necessarily driven by inter-particle interactions but can occur in an ideal gas as a result of a purely statistical saturation of excited states. However, interactions are necessary for any system to reach thermal equilibrium and so are required for condensation to occur in finite time. In this Chapter we review the role of interactions in Bose-Einstein condensation, covering both theory and experiment. We focus on measurements performed on harmonically trapped ultracold atomic gases, but also discuss how these results relate to the uniform-system case, which is more theoretically studied and also more relevant for other experimental systems. We first consider interaction strengths for which the system can be considered sufficiently close to equilibrium to measure thermodynamic behaviour. In particular we discuss the effects of interactions both on the mechanism of condensation (namely the saturation of the excited states) and on the critical temperature at which condensation occurs. We then discuss in more detail the conditions for the equilibrium thermodynamic measurements to be possible, and the non-equilibrium phenomena that occur when these conditions are controllably violated by tuning the strength of interactions in the gas.