Abstract
The achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation of photons (phBEC) in a dye-filled microcavity has led to a renewed interest in the density distribution of the ideal Bose gas in a two-dimensional harmonic oscillator. We present measurements of the radial profile of photons inside the microcavity below and above the critical point for phBEC with a good signal-to-noise ratio. We obtain a good agreement with theoretical profiles obtained using exact summation of eigenstates.
Highlights
For ideal bosons the local density approximation cannot be used as the homogeneous system in that case does not show Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) at non-zero temperature
This problem has recently become relevant with the achievement of phBEC [7], which are expected to behave as ideal bosons
Initial theoretical work on the density distribution of phBECs [8], which relies on the local density approximation, should be used with caution
Summary
Since the realization of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in dilute atomic gases [1, 2], the density distribution of BECs and their surrounding thermal cloud have been well studied using time-of-flight absorption imaging. The density distribution of BECs in a harmonic potential is studied and has been well described theoretically using a local density approximation [4]. We exploit the axial symmetry of the system by computing radial averages of the photon gas yielding a good signal-to-noise ratio of the overall signal, especially in the thermal tail of the distribution. This allows us to accurately study the tail and compare the behavior of the tail below and above the phase transition. To ensure reproducibility of our results, we perform our experiment in runs during which thousands of images are taken without user intervention
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