We discuss thermal and dynamical properties of Bose condensates confined by an external potential. First we analyze the Bose-Einstein transition temperature for an ideal Bose gas in a generic power-law potential and d-dimensional space. Then we investigate the effect of the shape of the trapping potential on the properties of a weakly-interacting Bose condensate. We show that using exotic trapp...

The discovery of the superfluid transition of liquid helium [1, 2] marked the first achievement of Bose–Einstein condensation in the laboratory, more than a decade after Einstein’s prediction for an ideal gas [3, 4]. Together with superconductivity, they o↵ered the first examples of macroscopic quantum phenomena and as such constituted a milestone in the history of Physics. The quest for the un...