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Phys. Rev. A 62, 033609 (2000) [2 pages]

Criterion for Bose-Einstein condensation for particles in traps

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C. J. Pethick1 and L. P. Pitaevskii2,3
1NORDITA, Blegdamsvej 17, DK-2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark
2Department of Physics, University of Trento, I-38050 Povo (Trento), Italy
3Kapitza Institute for Physical Problems, 117334 Moscow, Russia

Received 24 March 2000; published 15 August 2000

We consider the criterion for Bose-Einstein condensation for particles in a harmonic trap. For a fixed angular momentum, the lowest energy state for a cloud of bosons with attractive interactions is the ground state of the cloud with all the angular momentum in the center-of-mass motion, and the one-particle reduced density matrix generally does not have a single large eigenvalue, but a number of them, suggesting that the state is an example of a fragmented condensate [N. K. Wilkin, J. M. F. Gunn, and R. A. Smith, Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 2265 (1998)]. We show that a convenient way to describe correlations in the system is by defining an internal one-particle reduced density matrix, in which the center-of-mass motion is eliminated, and that this has a single eigenvalue equal to the number of particles for the problem considered here. Our considerations indicate that care is necessary in formulating a criterion for Bose-Einstein condensation.

© 2000 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.62.033609
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevA.62.033609
PACS:
03.75.Fi, 05.30.Jp, 67.40.Db, 67.40.Vs