Exact Eignstates for Trapped Weakly Interacting Bosons in Two Dimensions

Abstract

A system of N two-dimensional weakly interacting bosons in a harmonic trap is considered. When the two-particle potential is a delta function Smith and Wilkin have analytically proved that the elementary symmetric polynomials of particle coordinates measured from the center of mass are exact eigenstates. In this study, we point out that their proof works equally well for an arbitrary two-particle potential which possesses the translational and rotational symmetries. We find that the interaction energy associated with the eigenstate with angular momentum L is equal to aN(N-1)/2+(b-a)NL/2, where a and b are the interaction energies of two bosons in the lowest-energy one-particle state with zero and one unit of angular momentum, respectively. Additionally, we study briefly the case of attractive quartic interactions. We prove rigorously that the lowest-energy state is the one in which all angular momentum is carried by the center of mass motion.