We determine the energy density $xi (3/5) n epsilon_F$ and the gradient correction $lambda hbar^2( abla n)^2/(8m n)$ of the extended Thomas-Fermi (ETF) density functional, where $n$ is number density and $epsilon_F$ is Fermi energy, for a trapped two
-components Fermi gas with infinite scattering length (unitary Fermi gas) on the basis of recent diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) calculations [Phys. Rev. Lett. {bf 99}, 233201 (2007)]. In particular we find that $xi=0.455$ and $lambda=0.13$ give the best fit of the DMC data with an even number $N$ of particles. We also study the odd-even splitting $gamma N^{1/9} hbar omega$ of the ground-state energy for the unitary gas in a harmonic trap of frequency $omega$ determining the constant $gamma$. Finally we investigate the effect of the gradient term in the time-dependent ETF model by introducing generalized Galilei-invariant hydrodynamics equations.
We study vortical states in a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) filling a cigar-shaped trap. An effective one-dimensional (1D) nonpolynomial Schroedinger equation (NPSE) is derived in this setting, for the models with both repulsive and attractive inter
-atomic interactions. Analytical formulas for the density profiles are obtained from the NPSE in the case of self-repulsion within the Thomas-Fermi approximation, and in the case of the self-attraction as exact solutions (bright solitons). A crucially important ingredient of the analysis is the comparison of these predictions with direct numerical solutions for the vortex states in the underlying 3D Gross-Pitaevskii equation (GPE). The comparison demonstrates that the NPSE provides for a very accurate approximation, in all the cases, including the prediction of the stability of the bright solitons and collapse threshold for them. In addition to the straight cigar-shaped trap, we also consider a torus-shaped configuration. In that case, we find a threshold for the transition from the axially uniform state, with the transverse intrinsic vorticity, to a symmetry-breaking pattern, due to the instability in the self-attractive BEC filling the circular trap.
