2000/10/31 by K. Goral, Krzysztof Góral, Berthold-Georg Englert +3 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics #Strong Light-Matter Interactions #cond-mat
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.63.033606
published as Phys. Rev. A 63, 033606 (2001) · final version, 8 pages, 5 eps figures
arxiv created 2001/01/19 · openalex publication_date 2001/02/08 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We investigate the properties of a degenerate dilute gas of neutral fermionic particles in a harmonic trap that interact via dipole-dipole forces. We employ the semiclassical Thomas-Fermi method and discuss the Dirac correction to the interaction energy. A nearly analytic as well as an exact numerical minimization of the Thomas-Fermi-Dirac energy functional are performed in order to obtain the density distribution. We determine the stability of the system as a function of the interaction strength, the particle number, and the trap geometry. We find that there are interaction strengths and particle numbers for which the gas cannot be trapped stably in a spherically symmetric trap, but both prolate and oblate traps will work successfully.