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Phys. Rev. A 67, 023609 (2003) [10 pages]

Some exact results for a trapped quantum gas at finite temperature

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Brandon P. van Zyl and Rajat K. Bhaduri
Department of Physics and Astronomy, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S 4M1

Akira Suzuki
Tokyo University of Science, Kagurazaka 1-3, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 162-8601, Japan

Matthias Brack
Institut fur¨ Theoretische Physik, Universität Regensburg, D-93040 Regensburg, Germany

Received 19 September 2002; published 24 February 2003

We present closed analytical expressions for the particle and kinetic-energy spatial densities at finite temperatures for a system of noninteracting fermions (bosons) trapped in a d-dimensional harmonic-oscillator potential. For d=2 and 3, exact expressions for the N-particle densities are used to calculate perturbatively the temperature dependence of the splittings of the energy levels in a given shell due to a very weak interparticle interaction in a dilute Fermi gas. In two dimensions, we obtain analytically the surprising result that the l degeneracy in a harmonic-oscillator shell is not lifted in the lowest order even when the exact, rather than the Thomas-Fermi expression for the particle density is used. We also demonstrate rigorously (in two dimensions) the reduction of the exact zero-temperature fermionic expressions to the Thomas-Fermi form in the large-N limit.

© 2003 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.67.023609
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevA.67.023609
PACS:
03.75.Hh, 05.30.Fk