Analytical solutions of the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations for excitations of a trapped Bose-Einstein-condensed gas

We propose a method for finding analytical solutions of the Bogoliubov-de Gennes (BdG) equations for the low-lying collective excitations in a harmonically trapped Bose-Einstein condensate beyond the Thomas-Fermi limit. We first use a simple variational wave function for ground state to eliminate the divergence at the boundary layer of the condensate, which appears in the Thomas-Fermi approximation. We then solve the BdG equations analytically and obtain explicit and divergence-free expressions for the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the excitations for the traps with spherical and cylindrical symmetries. The solutions of the zero-energy mode of the BdG equations are also presented