Dynamics of a Bose-Einstein Condensate in an Anharmonic Trap

H. Ott, J. Fortagh, C. Zimmermann

Published 2002-12-09, updated 2003-11-12Version 3

We present a theoretical model to describe the dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensates in anharmonic trapping potentials. To first approximation the center-of-mass motion is separated from the internal condensate dynamics and the problem is reduced to the well known scaling solutions for the Thomas-Fermi radii. We discuss the validity of this approach and analyze the model for an anharmonic waveguide geometry which was recently realized in an experiment \cite{Ott2002c}.