Ground state of the dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate

We present a variational method to study the ground state of the newly realized {sup 52}Cr dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate. Besides the usual contact potential term in the mean-field equation, there is an additional long-range and anisotropic dipole-dipole interaction potential. We develop an efficient Newton-Raphson's scheme to solve the condensate state. The solution shows a double-peak feature in the loosely confined dimension. Compared to the existing single-peak calculations, the double-peak solution has lower energy and reflects the distinct property of the dipole-dipole interaction. Our method is easy and efficient to use for future investigations of the dipolar systems.