Dimensionality effects on the strongly interacting Bose-Einstein condensate with three-body interactions

Abstract

Using the density-functional theory, the Ginzburg Pitaevskii Gross (GPG) equation for Bose-Einstein (BE) condensate, confined in a magnetic trap, is modified to include contribution from three-body collisions in the strongly interacting regime a>>l, 'a' is the scattering length and 'l' being the characteristic low energy length scale. This generalized GPG equation has been solved numerically using the analytically derived Thomas-Fermi order parameter, which also includes three-body interactions. The order parameter, chemical potential, extent of correlation and other ground state properties are computed when the aspect ratio, λ, is varied from1.0 to 0.05 (λ represents the anisotropy of the magnetic trap). As λ is varied from 1.0 to 0.05, the condensate shape changes from isotropic three-dimensional (3-D) to highly anisotropic quasi one-dimensional (1-D). The stability of the BE condensate increases with decrease in λ, which is also borne out by the behavior of chemical potential and the total energy per particle, as there is a decrease of about four times for a=5000 a0 as well as for a=7000 a0, 'a0' being the Bohr radius. The extent of correlations, however, increases by more than five folds, showing that quasi 1-D BE condensate is highly correlated. Both two- and three-body interaction energies show a decrease with decrease in λ: three-body interaction energy staying below two-body interaction energy for a=5000 a0 while for a=7000 a0, a cross-over occurs between the two at λ ~ 0.35. As one goes from 3-D to quasi 1-D, the percentage difference for various physical quantities, computed between only two-body interactions and when both two- and three-body interactions are considered, shows a decrease, suggesting that the effect of three-body collisions become increasingly less significant in agreement with the recent study.