Damping of Hydrodynamic Modes in a Trapped Bose Gas above the Bose-Einstein Transition Temperature

We calculate the damping of low-lying collective modes of a trapped Bose gas in the hydrodynamic regime, and show that this comes solely from the shear viscosity, since the contributions from bulk viscosity and thermal conduction vanish. The hydrodynamic expression for the damping diverges due to the failure of hydrodynamics in the outer parts of the cloud, and we take this into account by a physically motivated cutoff procedure. Our analysis of available experimental data indicates that higher densities than have yet been achieved are necessary for investigating hydrodynamic modes above the Bose-Einstein transition temperature.