Take a singly quantized vortex of positive circulation. The superfluid velocity is , where is the complex argument of the condensate. Since , quantized circulation gives . Insert the radial Thomas–Fermi approximation for a condensate into the cylindrical volume integral, excluding the core :
Integrating the logarithmic and quadratic terms separately gives
The logarithm is the familiar long-range flow contribution of a quantum vortex; the comes from the declining trapped number density. If the bucket truncates the cloud, put and the same integration gives , provided . A vortex of integer winding number has and multiplies this flow energy by . The core radius acts as a cutoff of order the local healing length; its internal gradient and interaction energies are not computed by this shell estimate.
For repulsive interactions , the Thomas–Fermi approximation for a condensate neglects the density-gradient kinetic energy away from boundaries and vortex cores. The stationary Gross–Pitaevskii equation then gives wherever the condensate is present. At the axis , hence
Here and the support is also restricted to the physical bucket . The next parts' explicit outer cutoff assumes ; if the wall truncates the parabola and the corresponding integrals must use , not the natural trap radius. A hard-wall boundary layer or the smooth trap-edge healing region is beyond the Thomas–Fermi approximation for a condensate. For an untruncated radial profile, the total particle number is .