In this paper, we present a method for simulating the kinetic evolution of a dilute gas of atoms that are cooled below the critical temperature for Bose-Einstein condensation. Our method gives insight into the formulation of physical kinetics by illustrating directly the decomposition of the distribution function into an infinite sum of single-particle trajectories. This approach is valid for the entire range of phase-space densities, although we limit the discussion here to exclude the region where the condensate fraction is close to unity and the effect of the mean field is significant. We present explicit calculations of finite number effects on equilibrium, the dynamic build-up of the ground state, and simulations of evaporative cooling.

• Received 27 November 1996

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.55.3670