Published December 28, 2009 | Version v1
Journal article

Phase transitions in ideal and weakly interacting Bose gases with a finite number of particles confined in a box

  • 1. State Key Laboratory of Surface Physics, and Department of Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433 (China)

Description

We generalize the scheme to characterize phase transitions of finite systems in a complex temperature plane and approach the classifications of phase transitions in ideal and weakly interacting Bose gases of a finite number of particles, confined in a cubic box of volume L3 with different boundary conditions. For this finite ideal Bose system, by extending the classification parameters to all regions, we predict that the phase transition for periodic boundary conditions is of second order, while the transition in Dirichlet boundary conditions is of first order. For a weakly interacting Bose gas with periodic boundary conditions, we discuss the effects of finite particle numbers and inter-particle interactions on the nature of the phase transitions. We show that this homogenous weakly interacting Bose gas undergoes a second-order phase transition, which is in accordance with universality arguments for infinite systems. We also discuss the dependence of transition temperature on interaction strengths and particle numbers.

Availability note (English)

Available from http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0953-4075/42/24/245301

Additional details

Identifiers

DOI
10.1088/0953-4075/42/24/245301;
PII
S0953-4075(09)26166-9;

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Journal of Physics. B, Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics
Journal Volume
42
Journal Issue
24
Journal Page Range
[7 p.]
ISSN
0953-4075
CODEN
JPAPEH