  We theoretically investigate the evaporative cooling of cold rubidium atoms
that are brought close to a solid surface. The dynamics of the atom cloud are
described by coupling a dissipative Gross-Pitaevskii equation for the
condensate with a quantum Boltzmann description of the thermal cloud (the
Zaremba-Nikuni-Griffin method). We have also performed experiments to allow for
a detailed comparison with this model and find that it can capture the key
physics of this system provided the full collisional dynamics of the thermal
cloud are included. In addition, we suggest how to optimize surface cooling to
obtain the purest and largest condensates.
