Two-dimensional condensation of dilute Bose atoms in a harmonic trap

Abstract

We define a criterion for observing a two-dimensional Bose condensation in a three-dimensional laboratory, and we derive the Gross-Pitaevskii equation in two-dimension. A numerical calculation of the condensate wave function with data obtained from a recent experiment shows that atoms in a two-dimensional harmonic trap can be condensed into its ground state. The calculation of the ground-state energy of the 2D Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) shows that it becomes less stable than the three-dimensional BEC as the number of trapped atoms is increased.