Pairing phase of the degenerate Bose gas

Project level: Masters, Honours, Summer

In the 1970s there was speculation that the cause of superfluidity in helium-4 was not due to Bose-Einstein condensation, but a form of Cooper pairing between attractive bosons, similar to that which occurs for electrons in superconductors.  More recent calculations for the homogeneous system suggest that the temperature for the pairing transition is higher than for BEC - but that both are preceded by the mechanical collapse of the gas.  This collapse is however prevented in finite systems.  This project will use the classical field method to determine whether a pairing phase is possible for degenerate Bose gas with attractive interactions, and compare the results to the predictions of the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov method.