Two-Step Condensation of the Ideal Bose Gas in Highly Anisotropic Traps

The ideal Bose gas in a highly anisotropic harmonic potential is studied. It is found that Bose-Einstein condensation occurs in two distinct steps as the temperature is lowered. In the first step the specific heat shows a sharp feature, but the system still occupies many one-dimensional quantum states. In the second step, at a significantly lower temperature, the ground state becomes macroscopically occupied. It should be possible to verify these predictions using present-day atom traps. The two-step behavior can occur in a rather general class of anisotropic traps, including the box potential.