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Collective Excitations of Harmonically Trapped Ideal Gases

Other Condensed Matter 2009-05-12 v1 Statistical Mechanics

Abstract

We theoretically study the collective excitations of an ideal gas confined in an isotropic harmonic trap. We give an exact solution to the Boltzmann-Vlasov equation; as expected for a single-component system, the associated mode frequencies are integer multiples of the trapping frequency. We show that the expressions found by the scaling ansatz method are a special case of our solution. Our findings, however, are most useful in case the trap contains more than one phase: we demonstrate how to obtain the oscillation frequencies in case an interface is present between the ideal gas and a different phase.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0806.4895,
  title  = {Collective Excitations of Harmonically Trapped Ideal Gases},
  author = {Bert Van Schaeybroeck and Achilleas Lazarides},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0806.4895},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

4 pages, submitted to special issue of Eur. Phys. J. B "Novel Quantum Phases and Mesoscopic Physics in Quantum Gases"