Bose-Einstein Condensation of Atoms with Attractive Interaction

Abstract

We suggest that crucial effect on Bose-Einstein condensation in systems with attractive potential is three-body interaction. We investigate stationary solutions of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation with negative scattering length and a higher-order stabilising term in presence of an external parabolic potential. Stability properties of the condensate are similar to those for thermodynamic systems in statistical physics which have first order phase transitions. We have shown that there are three possible type of stationary solutions corresponding to stable, metastable and unstable phases. Results are discussed in relation to recently observed 7Li condensate.