Bose-Einstein condensation in harmonic oscillator potentials

Bose–Einstein Condensation (BEC) of both the ideal and the weakly inter-acting cold alkali gases confined by anisotropic harmonic oscillator poten-tials is investigated in this paper. It is shown that the transition point is shifted towards lower temperatures because of the trapped potentials, and the specific heat below the transition point is no longer proportional to T3/2. Expressions of modified condensation temperature, internal energy and the specific heat are derived for the ideal trapped gases explicitly. Moreover, the effect of interactions among the atoms on the transition temperature is also given and discussed.