Diffusion Monte Carlo analysis of the crossover from three to two dimensions for trapped Bose gases

We investigate the crossover from three to two dimensions for harmonically trapped hard-sphere Bose gases by varying the aspect ratio of the trapping potential. The diffusion Monte Carlo method is used to calculate both the ground-state energy and structural properties. The effect of trap anisotropy, interparticle interaction, and number of particles on the ground-state properties is discussed. Our results show that the minimum value of the aspect ratio at which the system reaches an asymptotic equilibrium distribution in the weakly confined direction decreases with increasing scattering length, while the minimum value of the aspect ratio at which the system enters the quasi-two-dimensional (2D) regime increases as both the scattering length and the number of particles increase. Additionally, the role played by particle correlations is proved to be more pronounced in the quasi-2D system than in the three-dimensional (3D) system by directly comparing the ground-state properties for the two cases. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.