Bose-Einstein condensation under external conditions

Klaus Kirsten, David J. Toms

Published 1998-04-20Version 1

We discuss the phenomenon of Bose-Einstein condensation under general external conditions using connections between partition sums and the heat-equation. Thermodynamical quantities like the critical temperature are given in terms of the heat-kernel coefficients of the associated Schr\"odinger equation. The general approach is applied to situations where the gas is confined by arbitrary potentials or by boxes of arbitrary shape.