Pauli Master Equation usable for Bose-Einstein condensation?

Question

As I am not an expert in the field, please correct me accordingly. Now to my problem: I wondered whether it is justified to use the Pauli Master Equation (i.e. linear coupling to markovian environment, sekular and born approximation) in the context of a phase transition such as in the case of Bose-Einstein condensation. The main meta question behind this are, of course, how to propagate the non-equilibrium time evolution of the transition into the model, and to which extent does the spectral density of the bath play a role.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I am no expert myslef, but I believe that Master equation analyses of Bose-Einstein condensation have indeed been employed in the past. E.g. in the works of Gardiner, Zoller and co-workes (for example, "Quantum kinetic theory III", PRA 58, 536 (1998) ), and of Scully, Zubairy and co-workers (for example,  "Condensation of N bosons II", PRA 61, 023609 (2000) ). The above two papers include derivations of the master equations they study.

A nice recent application of this approach was to study what happens to condensation in a non-equilibrium steady state (answer: several condensates may form!), see Vorberg et. al, PRL 111, 240405 (2013).