Variational Thomas-Fermi Theory of a Nonuniform Bose Condensate at Zero Temperature

TL;DR

This paper develops a variational Thomas-Fermi approach to model the spatially inhomogeneous Bose-Einstein condensate at zero temperature, providing a simplified yet effective description aligned with recent experimental systems.

Contribution

It introduces a local homogeneous approximation for inhomogeneous Bose condensates, extending the Thomas-Fermi model to bosonic systems at zero temperature.

Findings

Effective description of inhomogeneous BECs

Applicable to experimentally trapped condensates

Framework extendable to finite temperatures

Abstract

We derive a description of the spatially inhomogeneous Bose-Einstein condensate which treats the system locally as a homogeneous system. This approach, similar to the Thomas-Fermi model for the inhomogeneous many-particle fermion system, is well-suited to describe the atomic Bose-Einstein condensates that have recently been obtained experimentally through atomic trapping and cooling. In this paper, we confine our attention to the zero temperature case, although the treatment can be generalized to finite temperatures, as we shall discuss elsewhere.