Ideal Bose Gas

A Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) is a state of matter of a dilute gas of bosons cooled to temperatures very close to absolute zero (that is, very near 0 K or −273.16 °C). Under such conditions, a large fraction of bosons occupies the lowest quantum state, at which point macroscopic quantum phenomena become apparent.

Overview

In this section, we summarize some basic and useful thermodynamic results for Bose-Einstein condensation in a uniform, non-interacting gas of bosons.

The Bose distribution

For non-interacting bosons in thermodynamic equilibrium, the mean occupation number of the single-particle state $\nu$ is

$\langle n_{\nu }\rangle ={\frac {1}{e^{(\epsilon _{\nu }-\mu )/kT}-1}}\,.$