Dynamics of the Bose-Einstein condensation: Analogy with the collapse dynamics of a classical self-gravitating Brownian gas

Abstract

We consider the dynamics of a gas of free bosons within a semiclassical Fokker-Planck equation for which we give a physical justification. In this context, we find a striking similarity between the Bose-Einstein condensation in the canonical ensemble, and the gravitational collapse of a gas of classical self-gravitating Brownian particles. The paper is mainly devoted to the complete study of the Bose-Einstein "collapse" within this model. We find that at the Bose-Einstein condensation temperature Tc, the chemical potential mu(t) vanishes exponentially with a universal rate that we compute exactly. Below Tc, we show analytically that square root mu(t) vanishes linearly in a finite time t coll. After t coll, the mass of the condensate grows linearly with time and saturates exponentially to its equilibrium value for large time. We also give analytical results for the density scaling functions, for the corrections to scaling, and for the exponential relaxation time. Finally, we find that the equilibration time (above Tc) and the collapse time T coll(below Tc) both behave like -T -3 c ln|T-Tc|, near Tc.