Equivalent linear two-body equations for many-body systems

A method has been developed for obtaining equivalent linear two-body (ELTB) equations for the system of many (N) bosons using the variational principl e. The method has been applied to the one-dimensional N-body problem with p air-wise contact interactions (McGurie-Yang N-body problem) and to the dilu te Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of atoms in anisotropic harmonic traps at zero temperature. For both cases, it is shown that the method gives exce llent results for large N. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.