Energy-dependent scattering and the Gross-Pitaevskii equation in two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensates

We consider many-body effects on particle scattering in one-, two-, and three-dimensional (3D) Bose gases. We show that at T=0 these effects can be modeled by the simpler two-body T matrix evaluated off the energy shell. This is important in 1D and 2D because the two-body T matrix vanishes at zero energy and so mean-field effects on particle energies must be taken into account to obtain a self-consistent treatment of low-energy collisions. Using the off-shell two-body T matrix we obtain the energy and density dependence of the effective interaction in 1D and 2D and the appropriate Gross-Pitaevskii equations for these dimensions. Our results provide an alternative derivation of those of Kolomeisky and co-workers. We present numerical solutions of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation for a 2D condensate of hard-sphere bosons in a trap. We find that the interaction strength is much greater in 2D than for a 3D gas with the same hard-sphere radius. The Thomas-Fermi regime is, therefore, approached at lower condensate populations and the energy required to create vortices is lowered compared to the 3D case.