The Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) critical temperature in a relativistic ideal Bose gas of identical bosons, with and without the antibosons expected to be pair-produced abundantly at sufficiently hot temperatures, is exactly calculated for all boson number densities, all boson point rest masses, and all temperatures. The Helmholtz free energy at the critical BEC temperature is lower with antibosons, thus implying that omitting antibosons always leads to the computation of a metastable state.

A simple and inexpensive alternative to high-power lasers for the direct fabrication of microchannels and rapid prototyping of poly-dimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is presented. By focusing the infrared laser beam of a commercial, low-power CD-DVD unit on absorbing carbon micro-cluster additives, highly localized PDMS combustion can be used to etch the polymer, which is otherwise transparent at such wavelengths. Thanks to a precise and automated control of laser conditions, laser-induced incandescence is originated at the material surface and produces high-resolution micropatterns that present properties normally induced with lasers of much greater energies in PDMS: formation of in situ nanodomains, local fluorescence and waveguide patterns. An extensive study of the phenomenon and its performance for PDMS microfabrication are presented.

A simple method for manufacturing centimeter-long all-PDMS embedded and rib microwaveguides is presented. It allows for the fabrication of centimeter-long micromolds by direct laser ablation of a desired waveguide pattern inside an acrylic sheet to create a pattern which is then transferred to a poly-dimethylsiloxane (PDMS) layer using soft-lithography. A refractive index difference between the core and cladding of 1.3x10⁻³ was achieved by controlling the PDMS curing and linear attenuation of 1.27 dB/cm for embedded and 2.36 dB/cm for a rib waveguide, similar to other techniques. Finally, a beamsplitter was fabricated to demonstrate that our low-cost process is suitable to integrate waveguide devices on lab on chip platforms.