Self-similar analytical solution of the critical fluctuations problem for the Bose-Einstein condensation in an ideal gas

TL;DR

This paper provides an exact analytical solution for the universal probability distribution and thermodynamic functions of an ideal gas undergoing Bose-Einstein condensation, revealing the critical phenomena and universal structure near the phase transition.

Contribution

It introduces a universal constraint nonlinearity responsible for critical phenomena and derives simple analytical approximations describing the critical region's structure.

Findings

Exact universal probability distribution obtained

Analytical approximations match known asymptotics

Thermodynamic quantities align with renormalization-group predictions

Abstract

Paper is published in J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 43 (2010) 225001, doi:10.1088/1751-8113/43/22/225001. Exact analytical solution for the universal probability distribution of the order parameter fluctuations as well as for the universal statistical and thermodynamic functions of an ideal gas in the whole critical region of Bose-Einstein condensation is obtained. A universal constraint nonlinearity is found that is responsible for all nontrivial critical phenomena of the BEC phase transition. Simple analytical approximations, which describe the universal structure of the critical region in terms of confluent hypergeometric or parabolic cylinder functions, as well as asymptotics of the exact solution are derived. The results for the order parameter, all higher-order moments of BEC fluctuations, and thermodynamic quantities, including specific heat, perfectly match the known asymptotics outside critical region as well as the phenomenological renormalization-group ansatz with known critical exponents in the close vicinity of the critical point. Thus, a full analytical solution to a long-standing problem of finding a universal structure of the lambda-point for BEC in an ideal gas is found.