Universal scaling of three-dimensional bosonic gases in a trapping potential

Understand

We investigate the critical properties of cold bosonic gases in three dimensions, confined by an external quadratic potential coupled to the particle density, and realistically described by the Bose-Hubbard (BH) model.

• The trapping potential is often included in experiments with cold atoms and modifies the critical finite-size scaling of the homogeneous system in a non trivial way.
• The trap-size scaling (TSS) theory accounts for this effect through the exponent $\theta$.
• We perform extensive simulations of the BH model at the critical temperature, in the presence of harmonic traps.