Bose-Einstein Condensation in Exotic Trapping Potentials

Abstract

We discuss thermal and dynamical properties of Bose condensates confined by an external potential. First we analyze the Bose-Einstein transition temperature for an ideal Bose gas in a generic power-law potential and d-dimensional space. Then we investigate the effect of the shape of the trapping potential on the properties of a weakly-interacting Bose condensate. We show that using exotic trapping potentials the condensate can exhibit interesting coherent quantum phenomena, like superfluidity and tunneling. In particular, we consider toroidal and double-well potentials. The theoretical results are compared with recent experiments.