Accurate Thermodynamic Properties of Ideal Bosons in a Highly Anisotropic 2D Harmonic Potential

Abstract

One can derive an analytic result for the issue of Bose–Einstein condensation (BEC) in anisotropic 2D harmonic traps. We find that the number of uncondensed bosons is represented by an analytic function, which includes a series expansion of q-digamma functions in mathematics. One can utilize this analytic result to evaluate various thermodynamic functions of ideal bosons in 2D anisotropic harmonic traps. The first major discovery is that the internal energy of a finite number of ideal bosons is a monotonically increasing function of anisotropy parameter p. The second major discovery is that, when p≥0.5, the changing with temperature of the heat capacity of a finite number of ideal bosons possesses the maximum value, which happens at critical temperature Tc. The third major discovery is that, when 0.1≤p0.5, the changing with temperature of the heat capacity of a finite number of ideal bosons possesses an inflection point, but when p0.1, the inflection point disappears. The fourth major discovery is that, in the thermodynamic limit, at Tc and when p≥0.5, the heat capacity at constant number reveals a cusp singularity, which resembles the λ-transition of liquid helium-4. The fifth major discovery is that, in comparison to 2D isotropic harmonic traps (p=1), the singular peak of the specific heat becomes very gentle when p is lowered.

Keywords

• rigorous results in statistical mechanics
• Bose–Einstein condensation
• cold atoms