Condensation temperature of strongly interacting $^{39}K$ condensates in the mean-field and semi-classical approximations

Abstract

We consider the effect of inter-atom interactions on the condensation temperature $T_c$ of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate. We find an analytic expression of the shift in $T_c$ induced by interactions with respect the ideal non-interacting case, in the mean-field and semi-classical approximations. Such a shift is expressed in terms of the ratio $a/\lambda_{T_c}$ between the s-wave scattering length $a$ and the thermal wavelength $\lambda_{T_c}$. This result is used to discuss the tension between mean-field predictions and observations in strongly interacting $^{39}K$ condensates. It is shown that such a tension is solved taking into account the details of the Feshbach resonance used to tune $a$ in the experiments.