Thermodynamics of an interacting trapped Bose-Einstein gas in the classical field approximation

Abstract

We present a convenient technique describing the condensate in dynamical equilibrium with the thermal cloud, at temperatures close to the critical one. We show that the whole isolated system may be viewed as a single classical field undergoing nonlinear dynamics leading to a steady state. In our procedure it is the observation process and the finite detection time that allow for splitting the system into the condensate and the thermal cloud.