BOSE-EINSTEIN CONDENSATION UNDER EXTERNAL CONDITIONS

We discuss the phenomenon of Bose-Einstein condensation under general external conditions using connections between partition sums and the h eat-equation. Thermodynamical quantities like the critical temperature are given in terms of the heat-kernel coefficients of the associated Schrodinger equation. The general approach is applied to situations wh ere the gas is confined by arbitrary potentials or by boxes of arbitra ry shape, (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.