In Chapters 11–13, we gave a detailed discussion of the dynamics of a trapped Bose gas at finite temperatures in a region where the collisions described by the C12 and C22 terms in the kinetic equation (3.42) do not play the central role. In this “collisionless” region, the dominant interaction effects are associated with the self-consistent fields which both the condensate and noncondensate atoms feel. Thus the dynamics can be understood to a first approximation by neglecting the C12 and C22 collision integrals in the kinetic equation and, at the next stage, treating them as a weak perturbation on the collisionless dynamics.

In the rest of this book (Chapters 15–19), we turn to the study of the coupled ZNG equations in the opposite limit, where the C12 and C22 collision integrals completely determine the dynamics of the thermal cloud. Specifically, the collisions lead to the thermal cloud being in local hydrodynamic equilibrium, and hence this regime is described by the equations of collisional hydrodynamics. Its characteristic feature is that the nonequilibrium behaviour of the thermal cloud atoms can be completely described in terms of a few differential equations involving coarse-grained variables that are dependent on position and time, analogous to the condensate variables nc(r, t) and vc(r, t). In the present chapter, assuming that the thermal cloud distribution function f(p, r, t) is given by the Bose distribution describing partial local equilibrium, (15.16), we show how the ZNG coupled equations lead precisely to Landau's two-fluid equations, reviewed in Chapter 14. This equivalence is not obvious, mainly because Landau's equations are expressed in terms of thermodynamic variables, which are not used in a more microscopic analysis such as that used in the ZNG approach.

In Chapter 17, we derived two-fluid hydrodynamic equations that include damping related to transport coefficients. Our entire analysis was based on the coupled ZNG equations for the condensate and in the thermal cloud. These involved a generalized GP equation for the condensate and a kinetic equation for the thermal atoms. A crucial role is played by the C12 collision term in the kinetic equation, which describes the interactions between atoms in the condensate and in the thermal cloud.

Our analysis of the deviation from the diffusive local equilibrium solution of the kinetic equation was based on the Chapman–Enskog approach, extensively developed for classical gases and first applied to Bose-condensed gases by Kirkpatrick and Dorfman (1983, 1985a). This approach required a careful treatment of the novel feature relating to the C12 collisions both in the kinetic equation describing the thermal atoms and also in the source term Γ12 in the generalized GP equation for the condensate. Using the Chapman– Enskog approach to solve the kinetic equation for a trapped Bose gas, we obtained explicit expressions for the function ψ(p, r, t) that describes the deviation from diffusive local equilibrium, as defined by (17.25) and (17.39). This deviation can be related to various transport coefficients, as discussed in Chapter 17.

These transport coefficients are determined by the solutions of the three integral equations (17.40)–(17.42) for the three contributions to the deviation function ψ(p, r, t) in (17.39). In Section 18.1, we will solve these integral equations and obtain explicit expressions for the thermal conductivity k, the shear viscosity η and the four second viscosity coefficients ζi.

The goal of creating and observing quantized vortices in trapped Bose gases arose almost immediately following the first achievements of Bose–Einstein condensation. The motivation for doing so was the obvious analogy with vortices in liquid helium and in type-II superconductors, and the fact that the quantization of circulation is directly associated with superfluid flow. It was recognized that the observation of quantized vortices could be taken as indisputable evidence for the existence of superfluidity in these systems.

The review by Fetter and Svidzinsky (2001) contains a summary of the early experiments and the theoretical background for understanding the vortex state in a weakly interacting Bose gas based on the GP equation. This material will not be repeated here apart from those aspects that have a direct bearing on the focus of the present chapter, namely the properties of vortices at finite temperature. Although there have been some theoretical contributions to this subject, much remains to be done. The discussion in this chapter provides a framework for addressing the finite-temperature properties of vortex formation and vortex lattices in the context of the ZNG theory. The results in this chapter have not been published before, apart from those in subsection 9.8.1, which are based on Williams et al. (2002).

There are several issues that relate to finite temperatures. First, there is the nucleation and formation of vortices from an initial highly nonequilibrium state. Second, there is the interaction of vortices with thermal excitations, which is responsible for the dissipative dynamics of a nonequilibrium vortex state. Third, there is the question of the final equilibrium state, with respect to the condensate and noncondensate densities in the vicinity of a vortex and to the geometrical arrangement of vortices in space.

With very few exceptions (such as the centre-of-mass dipole mode), collective oscillations in trapped superfluid Bose gases are damped. In the “collisionless” region the damping is second order in the interaction strength. There are three possible components. One is Beliaev damping, which is due to the decay of a single excitation into two excitations; this can occur even at T = 0. In addition, there is Landau damping, which is due to a collective mode scattering from thermally excited excitations. This process only occurs at finite temperatures but quickly becomes the dominant damping mechanism as the temperature increases. Both Landau and Beliaev damping arise naturally from the imaginary part of the Beliaev second-order self-energies, as given in (5.40) in the case of a uniform Bose gas. Finally there is the damping that arises from the C22 and C12 collision processes; this is discussed in Chapters 8, 12 and 19.

In Chapter 12 we calculated the damping of various condensate modes at finite temperatures using direct numerical simulations of the ZNG equations. These numerical results were generally in very good agreement with the available experimental data. From a theoretical perspective, one advantage of the simulations is that the Landau damping contribution can be isolated simply by setting the C12 and C22 collision terms to zero.

After providing an introduction to Landau damping in uniform Bose gases in Section 13.1, we present in Section 13.2 a detailed discussion of Landau damping based on a general formula in terms of Bogoliubov–Popov excitations. This discussion makes it clear that the Landau damping of condensate oscillations arises from the interaction with a thermal cloud of excitations.

In Chapter 17, we derived the Landau–Khalatnikov two-fluid hydrodynamics which describes the collision-dominated region of a trapped Bose condensate interacting with a thermal cloud. In this chapter, we use these equations to discuss the damping of the hydrodynamic collective modes in a trapped Bose gas at finite temperatures. We derive variational expressions based on these equations for both the frequency and the damping of collective modes. This extends the analysis in Chapter 16 in which a variational approach was developed to calculate the hydrodynamic two-fluid oscillation frequencies in the non-dissipative limit. A novel feature of our treatment is the introduction of frequency-dependent transport coefficients, which produce a natural cutoff eliminating the collisionless region in the low-density tail of the thermal cloud. Our expression for the damping in trapped superfluid Bose gases is a natural generalization of the approach used by Landau and Lifshitz (1959) for uniform classical fluids. This chapter is mainly based on Nikuni and Griffin (2004).

In Chapters 15 and 17, we derived a closed set of two-fluid hydrodynamic equations for a trapped Bose-condensed gas starting from the simplified microscopic model describing the coupled dynamics of the condensate and noncondensate atoms given in Chapter 3. These hydrodynamic two-fluid equations include dissipative terms associated with the shear viscosity, the thermal conductivity and the four second viscosity coefficients. Explicit formulas for these transport coefficients were derived in Section 18.1. Our goal in this chapter is to find a general expression for the damping of the two-fluid modes in terms of these transport coefficients. We emphasize that the damping of hydrodynamic two-fluid oscillations is completely different in nature from the Landau and Beliaev damping of oscillations in the collisionless region which is treated in Chapters 12 and 13.

In Chapter 6, we derived a generalized Gross–Pitaevskii condensate equation which is coupled to a kinetic equation for the distribution function for the thermal atoms. However, the kinetic equation in Chapter 6 is only valid in the semiclassical limit. It involves the assumption that the thermal energy kBT is much greater than the spacing between the harmonic trap energy levels (kBT ≫ω0 where ω0 is the trap frequency) and also much greater than the average interaction energy (kBT ≫ gn). The ZNG model, based on HF excitations, is still expected to be adequate down to quite low temperatures in trapped Bose gases, as will be shown by the results in Chapter 12. However, the ZNG model will break down at very low temperatures, where the Hartree–Fock excitations must be replaced by the Bogoliubov spectrum. To deal with this, one has to derive a kinetic equation for the Bogoliubov quasiparticle excitations. This is the goal of the present chapter.

In this chapter, we use the second-order Beliaev approximation to discuss the nonequilibrium dynamics of a trapped Bose-condensed gas at finite temperatures. In doing to, we combine the second-order Beliaev self-energies with the lower-order Bogoliubov excitation spectrum, including off-diagonal single-particle propagators but still omitting the anomalous correlation functions. This last condition defines the Bogoliubov–Popov approximation. In this chapter, we consider only the damping which arises from collisions. We will not explicitly calculate corrections that are second-order in g to the quasiparticle energy spectrum or to the condensate chemical potential, both of which are associated with the real parts of the second-order Beliaev self-energies.

The present chapter is a natural generalization of work presented in Chapter 6 for the simpler HF excitation spectrum assumed in the ZNG analysis.

In this chapter we describe the numerical methods that can be used to solve the ZNG equations in the context of a dynamical simulation. These equations consist of a generalized GP equation (3.21) for the condensate and a Boltzmann equation (3.42) for the thermal component. The fact that the two equations are coupled makes their numerical solution more complex than when either is considered on its own. Indeed, the distinct quantum and classical aspects of the problem require specifically tailored numerical methods. Although most of these methods are well established and described elsewhere (Taha and Ablowitz, 1984; Sanz-Serna and Calvo, 1994), we provide in this chapter a detailed pedagogical discussion that will serve as a guide to those interested in carrying out such calculations for trapped Bose gases. This chapter is based on the papers of Jackson and Zaremba (2002a,b).

There are two main parts to the numerical problem. The first is developing a method for solving the time-dependent GP equation for an arbitrary three-dimensional geometry. This we take up in Section 11.1. Second, a method is needed for solving the Boltzmann equation that accounts for the dynamics of the thermal component. Here one must deal both with the Hamiltonian dynamics of the thermal atoms, as they move in the self-consistent mean field of the condensate and thermal cloud, and with the collisions that take place between the thermal atoms themselves (the C22 collisions) and between the thermal atoms and the condensate (the C12 collisions). The methods used to account for these two distinct collisional processes are taken up in Section 11.3. As we shall see, collisions play an important role and cannot be neglected even when the dynamical behaviour is dominated by mean-field interactions.

In the collisional region at finite temperatures, the collective modes of superfluids are described by the Landau two-fluid hydrodynamic equations reviewed in Chapter 14. In the case of trapped Bose gases, these are coupled differential equations with position-dependent coefficients associated with the local thermodynamic functions. Building on the approach initiated by Zaremba et al. (1999) for trapped atomic Bose gases, in this chapter we develop an alternative variational formulation of two-fluid hydrodynamics. This is based on the work of Zilsel (1950), originally developed to deal with superfluid He. Assuming a simple variational ansatz for the superfluid and normal fluid velocity fields, this approach reduces the problem of finding the hydrodynamic collective mode frequencies to solving coupled algebraic equations for a few variational parameters. These equations contain constants that involve spatial integrals over various equilibrium thermodynamic derivatives. Such a variational approach is both simpler and more physical than a direct attempt to solve the Landau two-fluid equations numerically.

This chapter is mainly based on Taylor and Griffin (2005), Taylor (2008) and Zilsel (1950). In it, we discuss the normal modes of the non-dissipative Landau two-fluid equations for a trapped superfluid. In Section 16.3, we illustrate this formalism by deriving expressions for the frequencies of the dipole and breathing modes of a trapped Bose superfluid. In Chapters 17 and 18, we discuss an extended version of the two-fluid equations that includes hydrodynamic damping. The hydrodynamic damping of the collective modes is calculated in Chapter 19 using a generalized version of the variational approach developed in this chapter.

Zilsel's variational formulation

Since two-fluid hydrodynamics only describes a system in local equilibrium, all thermodynamic quantities are functions of position and time. Even in static equilibrium, in the presence of a trapping potential, most thermodynamic quantities will be position dependent.

In this chapter, we review the famous Landau theory of superfluidity at finite temperatures. This theory is based on coupled hydrodynamic equations for the superfluid and normal fluid components. Landau's two-fluid description is only valid when collisions among the thermal excitations making up the normal fluid are strong enough to produce local hydrodynamic equilibrium. These two-fluid equations were originally developed for liquid. He but are thought to be generic in form, describing the collision-dominated hydrodynamic region of all Bose superfluids. In this chapter, we will consider the solutions of the two-fluid equations mainly for a uniform superfluid. We discuss the existence of second sound (involving the out-of-phase motion of the superfluid and normal fluid components) as a characteristic feature of a Bose superfluid at finite temperatures.

This chapter gives background material needed for Chapters 15–19. In Chapter 15, we will show that, in the appropriate limit, the Landau two-fluid equations can be derived from the ZNG coupled equations given in Chapter 3 for a trapped dilute Bose-condensed gas. In Chapters 17–19, we extend this discussion and derive the Landau–Khalatnikov two-fluid equations, which include hydrodynamic damping associated with various transport coefficients. Useful reviews of the two-fluid equations in the context of dilute spatially uniform Bose-condensed gases are given by Pethick and Smith (2008, Chapter 10) and Pitaevskii and Stringari (2003, Chapter 6).

History of two-fluid equations

The original discovery of superfluidity in liquid He was dramatically announced with the publication of the famous back-to-back papers of Kapitza (1938) in Moscow and Allen and Misener (1938) in Cambridge. These and subsequent experiments in the next few years showed that superfluid He could exhibit very bizarre hydrodynamic behaviour compared to classical liquids.

Trapped Bose-condensed atomic gases are remarkable because, in spite of the fact that these are very dilute systems, they exhibit robust coherent dynamic behaviour when perturbed. These quantum “wisps of matter” are a new phase of highly coherent matter. While binary collisions are very infrequent, the large coherent mean field associated with the Bose condensate ensures that interactions play a crucial role in determining the collective response of these trapped superfluid gases.

In our discussion of the theory of collective oscillations of atomic condensates, the macroscopic Bose wavefunction Φ(r, t) plays a central role. This wavefunction is the BEC order parameter. As discussed in Chapter 1, the initial attempts at defining this order parameter began with the pioneering work of London (1938a), were further developed by Bogoliubov (1947) and finally extended to deal with any Bose superfluid using the general quantum field theoretic formalism developed by Beliaev (1958a). Almost all this early theoretical work was limited to T = 0 where, in a dilute weakly interacting Bose gas, all the atoms are in the condensate. The first extension of these ideas to nonuniform Bose condensates was by Pitaevskii (1961) and, independently, by Gross (1961), which led to the now famous Gross–Pitaevskii (GP) equation of motion for Φ(r, t). Before the discovery of BEC in trapped gases, the time-dependent GP equation was mainly used to study vortices in Bose superfluids, which involve a spatially nonuniform ground state. Apart from this application, the GP equation was largely unknown. The situation changed overnight in 1995 with the creation of trapped nonuniform Bose condensates in atomic gases.

In Chapter 4, we introduced the Kadanoff–Baym equations of motion for the imaginary-time nonequilibrium Green's functions for a Bose gas, as given by (4.59) and (4.60). In this chapter, we will use the generalization of these equations of motion to find the equivalent equations of motion for the real-time Green's functions. These can be written in a natural way in the form of a kinetic equation. Using a simple Hartree–Fock approximation, we show how the coupled equations for the condensate and thermal cloud given in Chapter 3 emerge naturally from the Kadanoff–Baym (KB) formalism. This chapter is based on Imamović-Tomasović and Griffin (2001) and Imamović-Tomasović (2001), building on the pioneering work of Kane and Kadanoff (1965).

In this chapter and Chapter 7 we review the KB formalism. However, we also encourage the reader to read the original account given by Kadanoff and Baym (1962). The goals and accomplishments of their seminal book are beautifully captured by the following quote from p. 138:

A closely related way of treating the nonequilibrium dynamics of a Bose-condensed gas is based on the two-particle irreducible (2PI) effective action together with the Schwinger–Keldysh closed-time path formalism. Berges (2004) gives a detailed review of this approach, which allows one to derive the nonequilibrium action on the basis of controllable approximations.

The collective oscillations of a condensate at zero temperature are well described by the solutions of the linearized time-dependent Gross–Pitaevskii (GP) equation of motion for the condensate wavefunction Φ(r, t). At finite temperatures, however, the condensate dynamics is modified by interactions with the noncondensate atoms that comprise the thermal cloud. To account for these interactions in detail involves a sophisticated numerical analysis, which will be described in Chapter 11. However, some qualitative understanding of the effect of collisions between the condensate and noncondensate components can be gained by treating the thermal cloud within an approximation that ignores its dynamics. This approximation, referred to as the static thermal cloud approximation, is the topic of the present chapter. As explained in more detail below, it is defined by the assumption that the condensate moves in the presence of a thermal cloud that remains in a state of thermal equilibrium. Thus, if the condensate is induced to oscillate, it initially departs from equilibrium with the thermal cloud, but collisions lead to a damping of the condensate oscillation and ultimately equilibrate the two components. This collisional damping is in addition to the usual Landau and Beliaev damping, which is present even in the “collisionless” regime.

The approximate version of the fully coupled ZNG equations to be discussed here provides the simplest finite-temperature extension of the theory of condensate dynamics based on the usual GP equation. The extent to which the treatment gives a reasonable first approximation will be examined in Chapter 11. It will be shown that the static thermal cloud approximation does provide a qualitative understanding of the damping of modes in which the condensate is the main participant.

In Chapter 15, we showed that in the limit of short collision times the coupled equations of motion for the condensate and noncondensate atoms lead to Landau's non-dissipative two-fluid hydrodynamics. However the approach used in Chapter 15 was not based on a small expansion parameter, in contrast with the more systematic Chapman–Enskog procedure used to derive hydrodynamic damping in the kinetic theory of classical gases. In the present chapter, we generalize the procedure of Chapter 15 to trapped Bose-condensed gases, in order to derive two-fluid hydrodynamic equations that include dissipation due to transport processes. We solve the kinetic equation by expanding the nonequilibrium single-particle distribution function f(p, r, t) around the distribution function f(0)(p, r, t) that describes complete local equilibrium between the condensate and the noncondensate components. All hydrodynamic damping effects are included by taking into account deviations from the local equilibrium distribution function f(0). Our discussion for a trapped Bose gas is a natural extension of the pioneering work of Kirkpatrick and Dorfman (1983, 1985a) for a uniform Bose-condensed gas. This chapter is mainly based on their work as well as on Nikuni and Griffin (2001a,b).

We will prove that, with appropriate definitions of various thermodynamic variables, our two-fluid hydrodynamic equations including damping have precisely the structure of those first derived by Landau and Khalatnikov for superfluid He. In particular, the damping associated with the collisional exchange of atoms between the condensate and noncondensate components, which is discussed at length in Chapter 15, is now expressed in terms of frequency-dependent second viscosity coefficients. This special type of damping is a characteristic signature of a dilute Bose superfluid and exists in addition to the hydrodynamic damping associated with the shear viscosity and thermal conductivity of the normal fluid.