Analytical theory of mesoscopic Bose-Einstein condensation in ideal gas

TL;DR

This paper provides an analytical framework for understanding mesoscopic Bose-Einstein condensation in ideal gases, revealing universal structures, critical phenomena, and precise models for condensate statistics across different trap configurations.

Contribution

It introduces a universal analytical solution for BEC critical phenomena, including new trap models and a refinement scheme for condensate statistics based on universality principles.

Findings

Universal structure of BEC fluctuations and thermodynamics identified.

Exact solutions for 2-level and 3-level trap models derived.

Critical exponents and universal functions obtained from analytical solutions.

Abstract

We find universal structure and scaling of BEC statistics and thermodynamics for mesoscopic canonical-ensemble ideal gas in a trap for any parameters, including critical region. We identify universal constraint-cut-off mechanism that makes BEC fluctuations non-Gaussian and is responsible for critical phenomena. Main result is analytical solution to problem of critical phenomena. It is derived by calculating universal distribution of noncondensate occupation (Landau function) and then universal functions for physical quantities. We find asymptotics of that solution and its approximations which describe universal structure of critical region in terms of parabolic cylinder or confluent hypergeometric functions. Results for order parameter, statistics, and thermodynamics match known asymptotics outside critical region. We suggest 2-level and 3-level trap models and find their exact solutions in terms of cut-off negative binomial distribution (that tends to cut-off gamma distribution in continuous limit) and confluent hypergeometric distribution. We introduce a regular refinement scheme for condensate statistics approximations on the basis of infrared universality of higher-order cumulants and method of superposition and show how to model BEC statistics in actual traps. We find that 3-level trap model with matching the first 4 or 5 cumulants is enough to yield remarkably accurate results in whole critical region. We derive exact multinomial expansion for noncondensate occupation distribution and find its high temperature asymptotics (Poisson distribution). We demonstrate that critical exponents and a few known terms of Taylor expansion of universal functions, calculated previously from fitting finite-size simulations within renorm-group theory, can be obtained from presented solutions.