Relaxation Processes in Clouds of Trapped Bosons above the Bose-Einstein Condensation Temperature

G. M. Kavoulakis; C. J. Pethick; H. Smith

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.81.4036

Relaxation Processes in Clouds of Trapped Bosons above the Bose-Einstein Condensation Temperature

G. M. Kavoulakis, C. J. Pethick, and H. Smith

Phys. Rev. Lett. 81, 4036 – Published 9 November 1998

Abstract

We present a unified account of damping of low-lying collective modes and of relaxation of temperature anisotropies in a trapped Bose gas in the collisionless regime. By means of variational techniques, we show that the relaxation times for the two situations are closely related to the simplest variational estimate of the viscous relaxation time. We derive rather precise theoretical expressions for the characteristic relaxation times and compare our results with experiment.

Received 17 April 1998

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.81.4036

Authors & Affiliations

G. M. Kavoulakis¹, C. J. Pethick^1,2, and H. Smith³

¹NORDITA, Blegdamsvej 17, DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark
²Department of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1110 West Green Street, Urbana, Illinois 61801-3080
³Ørsted Laboratory, H. C. Ørsted Institute, Universitetsparken 5, DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark