Abstract

We use the quantum kinetic theory derived in Refs. 1 and 2 to calculate the steady-state and the fluctuations of a trapped Bose-Einstein condensate at finite temperature. We divide the system into two parts. The first part consists of the condensate particles. They are described quantum mechanically using the number-conserving Bogoliubov method derived in Ref. 3 that allows us to characterize the condensate by the number of condensed particles N. The second part are the noncondensed particles. They are treated as a classical gas in thermal equilibrium with temperature T and chemical potential μ.

© 1998 Optical Society of America