Absence of Fragmentation in Two-Dimensional Bose-Einstein Condensation

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensation in finite trapped systems occurs without fragmentation, with the condensate predominantly occupying a single quantum state, supported by analytical and numerical methods.

Contribution

The study provides a detailed analysis of the condensate structure in 2D Bose gases, showing the absence of fragmentation using a new collocation-minimization approach within the Hartree-Fock approximation.

Findings

Condensate remains in a single quantum state in 2D systems.

Population of excited states remains negligible at finite temperature.

Method reproduces known results for ideal gases and extends to interacting systems.

Abstract

We investigate the possibility that the BEC-like phenomena recently detected on two-dimensional finite trapped systems consist of fragmented condensates. We derive and diagonalize the one-body density matrix of a two-dimensional isotropically trapped Bose gas at finite temperature. For the ideal gas, the procedure reproduces the exact harmonic-oscillator eigenfunctions and the Bose distribution. We use a new collocation-minimization method to study the interacting gas in the Hartree-Fock approximation and obtain a ground-state wavefunction and condensate fraction consistent with those obtained by other methods. The populations of the next few eigenstates increase at the expense of the ground state but continue to be negligible; this supports the conclusion that two-dimensional BEC is into a single state.