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Physical Review A

Ground state of a weakly interacting Bose gas of atoms in a tight trap

Maciej Lewenstein, Li You

Published Feb 1, 1996• 23 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We study properties of the ground state of a bosonic gas of atoms in a tight trap. The atoms interact via model molecular potentials that may have either positive or negative scattering lengths. We discuss the possibility of Bose-Einstein condensation in such a system. We show that when the size of the trap becomes comparable to the correlation length of the condensate, stable Bose-Einstein condensation might occur independent of the sign of the scattering length. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.53.909

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We calculate the energy and the condensate fraction of a system of trapped bosons interacting via a short-range two-body potential with positive scattering length. The potential is attractive and has a two-body bound state. When the scattering length is small compared to the trap length the system is model independent: all potential models —attractive, repulsive and zero-range— provide similar results. When the scattering length is large the attractive model differs qualitatively from the repulsive and zero-range models. In this regime the system with attractive potential becomes independent of the scattering length, with both the energy and the condensate fraction converging towards finite constants.