Finite size scaling and the role of the thermodynamic ensemble in the transition temperature of a dilute Bose gas

Erich J. Mueller, Gordon Baym, Markus Holzmann

Published 2001-05-18Version 1

We study the Bose-Einstein condensation phase transition in a weakly interacting gas through a perturbative analysis of finite systems. In both the grand canonical and the canonical ensembles, perturbation theory suffers from infrared divergences and cannot directly determine the transition temperature in the thermodynamic limit. However, in conjunction with finite size scaling, perturbation theory provides a powerful calculation tool. We implement it here to estimate a shift in the transition temperature in the canonical ensemble consistent with grand canonical calculations.