Ground-state properties of trapped Bose-Einstein condensates: Extension of the Thomas-Fermi approximation

We derive general approximate formulas that provide with remarkable accuracy the ground-state properties of any mean-field scalar Bose-Einstein condensate with short-range repulsive interatomic interactions, confined in arbitrary cylindrically symmetric harmonic traps. Our formulation is even applicable for condensates containing a multiply quantized axisymmetric vortex. We have checked the validity of our formulas by numerically solving the 3D Gross-Pitaevskii equation.