Saturday, July 18, 2015

superfluidity - Are all bose-einstein condensates superfluid?


I feel like the answer should be "no" since all superfluids are not strictly BEC since they can undergo a Kosterlitz–Thouless transition in 2D, for example. I believe the ideal gas isn't superfluid, but is there any experimental evidence of a BEC without superfluid properties? I've been searching with no luck.



Answer



You can have superfluids that are not BECs and BECs that are not superfluid. Let me quote a text, "Bose-Einstein Condensation in Dilute Gases", Pethick & Smith, 2nd edition (2008), chapter 10:



Historically, the connection between superfluidity and the existence of a condensate, a macroscopically occupied quantum state, dates back to Fritz London's suggestion in 1938, as we have described in Chapter 1. However, the connection between Bose-Einstein condensation and superfluidity is a subtle one. A Bose-Einstein condensed system does not necessarily exhibit superfluidity, an example being the ideal Bose gas for which the critical velocity vanishes, as demonstrated in Sec. 10.1 below. Also lower-dimensional systems may exhibit superfluid behavior in the absence of a true condensate, as we shall see in Chapter 15.



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