Study of Zero Temperature Ground State Properties of the Repulsive Bose-Einstein Condensate in an Anharmonic Trap

Abstract

The zero-temperature ground state properties of experimental ⁸⁷Rb condensate are studied in a harmonic plus quartic trap [ V(r) =  ½mω²r² + λr⁴ ]. The anharmonic parameter (λ) is slowly tuned from harmonic to anharmonic. For each choice of λ, the many-particle Schrödinger equation is solved using the potential harmonic expansion method and determines the lowest effective many-body potential. We utilize the correlated two-body basis function, which keeps all possible two-body correlations. The use of van der Waals interaction gives realistic pictures. We calculate kinetic energy, trapping potential energy, interaction energy, and total ground state energy of the condensate in this confining potential, modelled experimentally. The motivation of the present study is to investigate the crucial dependency of the properties of an interacting quantum many-body system on λ. The average size of the condensate has also been calculated to observe how the stability of repulsive condensate depends on anharmonicity. In particular, our calculation presents a clear physical picture of the repulsive condensate in an anharmonic trap.