Critical Temperature of a Trapped Bose Gas: Comparison of Theory and Experiment

Matthew J. Davis and P. Blair Blakie
Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 060404 – Published 16 February 2006

Abstract

We apply the projected Gross-Pitaevskii equation (PGPE) formalism to the experimental problem of the shift in critical temperature Tc of a harmonically confined Bose gas as reported in Gerbier et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 030405 (2004). The PGPE method includes critical fluctuations and we find the results differ from various mean-field theories, and are in best agreement with experimental data. To unequivocally observe beyond mean-field effects, however, the experimental precision must either improve by an order of magnitude, or consider more strongly interacting systems. This is the first application of a classical field method to make quantitative comparison with experiment.

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  • Received 4 September 2005

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.96.060404

©2006 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Matthew J. Davis1,* and P. Blair Blakie2

  • 1ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum-Atom Optics, School of Physical Sciences, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD 4072, Australia
  • 2Department of Physics, University of Otago, P.O. Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand

  • *Electronic address: mdavis@physics.uq.edu.au

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Vol. 96, Iss. 6 — 17 February 2006

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