Landau damping in dilute Bose gases

Landau damping in weakly interacting Bose gases is investigated by means of perturbation theory. Our approach points out the crucial role played by Bose-Einstein condensation and yields an explicit expression for the decay rate of elementary excitations in both uniform and non-uniform gases. Systematic results are derived for the phonon width in homogeneous gases interacting with repulsive forces. Special attention is given to the low and high temperature regimes. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.