Critical Temperature for Bose-Einstein condensation in quartic potentials

Abstract

The quartic confining potential has emerged as a key ingredient to obtain fast rotating vortices in BEC as well as observation of quantum phase transitions in optical lattices. We calculate the critical temperature $T_c$ of bosons at which normal to BEC transition occurs for the quartic confining potential. Further more, we evaluate the effect of finite particle number on $T_c$ and find that $\Delta T_c/T_c$ is larger in quartic potential as compared to quadratic potential for number of particles $ < 10^5$. Interestingly, the situation is reversed if the number of particles is $\gtrsim10^5$.