The ideal Bose gas in open harmonic trap systems and its condensation revisited.

We rigorously revisit a textbook model used to figure out the Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) phenomenon created by dilute cold alkali atoms gases in a magnetic-optical trap. It consists of a d-dimensional (d=1,2,3) ideal non-relativistic spin-0 Bose gas confined in a box and trapped in an isotropic harmonic potential. Throughout we review and clarify a series of methods involved in the derivation of the thermodynamics in the grand-canonical situation. To make the derivation consistent with the usual rules of the statistical mechanics, we assign through our open-trap limit approach the role of canonical parameter to a rescaled number of particles (instead of an effective density involving the pulsation of the trap). Within this approach, we formulate an Einstein-like and Penrose-Onsager-like criterion of BEC and show their equivalence. Afterwards, we focus on the spatial localization of the condensate/thermal gas. When dealing with the reduced density matrix, our method is similar to the loop path approach.

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Source https://hal.science/hal-00834558
Author Savoie, Baptiste, Beau, Mathieu
Maintainer CCSD
Last Updated May 10, 2026, 17:11 (UTC)
Created May 10, 2026, 17:11 (UTC)
Identifier hal-00834558
Language en
Rights https://about.hal.science/hal-authorisation-v1/
contributor Aarhus University [Aarhus]
creator Savoie, Baptiste
date 2013-06-16T00:00:00
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harvest_source_id 3374d638-d20b-4672-ba96-a23232d55657
harvest_source_title test moissonnage SELUNE
metadata_modified 2024-04-08T00:00:00
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