Abstract
A system of charged particles in a harmonic trap is a realization of Thomson's raisin cake model. Therefore, we call it a Thomson atom. Bosonic, fermionic and mixed Thomson atoms exist. In this paper we focus on bosonic Thomson atoms in isotropic traps. Approximating the exact ground state by a condensate we investigate ground-state properties at temperature T = 0 using the Hartree-Fock theory for bosons. In order to assess the quality of our mean-field approach we compare the Hartree-Fock results for bosonic Thomson helium with an exact diagonalization. In contrast to the weakly interacting Bose gas (alkali vapours) mean-field calculations are reliable in the limit of large particle density. The Wigner regime (low particle density) is discussed.
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