Critical temperature of a trapped bose Gas: Comparison of theory and experiment

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, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 030405 (2004)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.92.030405. 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. © 2006 The American Physical Society.