Analytical description of a trapped semi-ideal Bose gas at finite temperature

TL;DR

This paper provides an analytical framework for describing a trapped semi-ideal Bose gas at finite temperature, capturing the effects of interactions on condensate properties and thermal cloud distribution.

Contribution

It introduces explicit analytical expressions for density distributions in a semi-ideal Bose gas, accounting for mean-field interactions.

Findings

Analytical density profiles for condensate and thermal cloud.

Reduction of condensate fraction due to interactions.

Effective potential includes external trap and mean-field effects.

Abstract

Present experiments with Bose condensed gases can be largely described by a semi-ideal two-gas model. In this model, the condensate is influenced only by the mean-field repulsion among condensed atoms, while the thermal cloud is considered an ideal gas confined by an effective potential that consists of the external trap and the mean-field repulsion by the condensate. This simple, intuitive model provides explicit analytical expressions for the density distributions of the condensate and the thermal component. It describes the reduction of the condensate fraction relative to that of an ideal gas as a consequence of the positive chemical potential due to interactions in the condensate.