Abstract
We calculate explicitly the variation δTc of the Bose-Einstein condensation temperature Tc induced by weak repulsive two-body interactions to leading order in the interaction strength. As shown earlier by general arguments, δTc/Tc is linear in the dimensionless product an1/3 to leading order, where n is the density and a the scattering length. This result is non-perturbative, and a direct perturbative calculation of the amplitude is impossible due to infrared divergences familiar from the study of the superfluid helium lambda transition. Therefore, we introduce here another standard expansion scheme, generalizing the initial model which depends on one complex field to one depending on N real fields, and calculating the temperature shift at leading order for large N. The result is explicit and finite. The reliability of the result depends on the relevance of the large-N expansion to the situation N = 2, which can in principle be checked by systematic higher-order calculations. The large-N result agrees remarkably well with recent numerical simulations.