Ballistic motion of a tracer particle coupled to a Bose gas

Abstract

We study the motion of a heavy tracer particle weakly coupled to a dense interacting Bose gas exhibiting Bose–Einstein condensation. In the so-called mean-field limit, the dynamics of this system approaches one determined by nonlinear Hamiltonian evolution equations. We derive the effective dynamics of the tracer particle, which is described by a non-linear integro-differential equation with memory, and prove that if the initial speed of the tracer particle is below the speed of sound in the Bose gas the motion of the particle approaches an inertial motion at constant velocity at large times.