English

Condensation of bosons in kinetic regime

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2009-10-28 v2 Astrophysics Condensed Matter

Abstract

We study the kinetic regime of the Bose-condensation of scalar particles with weak λϕ4\lambda \phi^4 self-interaction. The Boltzmann equation is solved numerically. We consider two kinetic stages. At the first stage the condensate is still absent but there is a nonzero inflow of particles towards p=0{\bf p} = {\bf 0} and the distribution function at p=0{\bf p} ={\bf 0} grows from finite values to infinity in a finite time. We observe a profound similarity between Bose-condensation and Kolmogorov turbulence. At the second stage there are two components, the condensate and particles, reaching their equilibrium values. We show that the evolution in both stages proceeds in a self-similar way and find the time needed for condensation. We do not consider a phase transition from the first stage to the second. Condensation of self-interacting bosons is compared to the condensation driven by interaction with a cold gas of fermions; the latter turns out to be self-similar too. Exploiting the self-similarity we obtain a number of analytical results in all cases.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-ph/9507306,
  title  = {Condensation of bosons in kinetic regime},
  author = {D. V. Semikoz and I. I. Tkachev},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-ph/9507306},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

23 pages plus 11 uuencoded figures, LaTeX, REVTEX 3.0 version