Finite Temperature Collapse of a Bose Gas with Attractive Interactions (extended version)

Abstract

We study the mechanical stability of the weakly interacting Bose gas with attractive interactions, and construct a unified picture of the collapse valid from the low temperature condensed regime to the high temperature classical regime. As we show, the non-condensed particles play a crucial role in determining the region of stability, even providing a mechanism for collapse in the non-condensed cloud. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the mechanical instability prevents BCS-type ``pairing'' in the attractive Bose gas. We extend our results to describe domain formation in spinor condensates.