Kosterlitz-Thouless Transition of the Quasi-Two-Dimensional Trapped Bose Gas

We use quantum Monte Carlo methods to compute the density profile, the nonclassical moment of inertia, and the condensate fraction of an interacting quasi-two-dimensional trapped Bose gas with up to N ~ 5 x 10(5) atoms and parameters closely related to recent experiments. We locate the Kosterlitz-Thouless temperature T(KT) and discuss intrinsic signatures of the onset of superfluidity in the density profile. Below T(KT), the condensate fraction is macroscopic even for our largest systems and decays only slowly with system size. We show that the thermal population of excited states in the transverse direction changes the two-dimensional density profile noticeably in both the normal and the superfluid phase.