No Arabic abstract
In the presence of a laser-induced spin-orbit coupling an interacting ultra cold spinor Bose-Einstein condensate may acquire a quasi-relativistic character described by a non-linear Dirac-like equation. We show that as a result of the spin-orbit coupling and the non-linearity the condensate may become self-trapped, resembling the so-called chiral confinement, previously studied in the context of the massive Thirring model. We first consider 1D geometries where the self-confined condensates present an intriguing sinusoidal dependence on the inter-particle interactions. We further show that multi-dimensional chiral-confinement is also possible under appropriate feasible laser arrangements, and discuss the properties of 2D and 3D condensates, which differ significantly from the 1D case.
The dynamic behavior of vortex pairs in two-component coherently (Rabi) coupled Bose-Einstein condensates is investigated in the presence of harmonic trapping. We discuss the role of the surface tension associated with the domain wall connecting two vortices in condensates of atoms occupying different spin states and its effect on the precession of the vortex pair. The results, based on the numerical solution of the Gross-Pitaevskii equations, are compared with the predictions of an analytical macroscopic model and are discussed as a function of the size of the pair, the Rabi coupling and the inter-component interaction. We show that the increase of the Rabi coupling results in the disintegration of the domain wall into smaller pieces, connecting vortices of new-created vortex pairs. The resulting scenario is the analogue of quark confinement and string breaking in quantum chromodynamics.
We demonstrate that the confinement of half-quantized vortices (HQVs) in coherently coupled Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) simulates certain aspects of the confinement in $SU(2)$ quantum chromodynamics (QCD) in 2+1 space-time dimensions. By identifying the circulation of superfluid velocity as the baryon number and the relative phase between two components as a dual gluon, we identify HQVs in a single component as electrically charged particles with a half baryon number. Further, we show that only singlet states of the relative phase of two components can stably exist as bound states of vortices, that is, a pair of vortices in each component (a baryon) and a pair of a vortex and an antivortex in the same component (a meson). We then study the dynamics of a baryon and meson; baryon is static at the equilibrium and rotates once it deviates from the equilibrium, while a meson moves with constant velocity. For both baryon and meson we verify a linear confinement and determine that they are broken, thus creating other baryons or mesons in the middle when two constituent vortices are separated by more than some critical distance, resembling QCD.
We analyse, theoretically and experimentally, the nature of solitonic vortices (SV) in an elongated Bose-Einstein condensate. In the experiment, such defects are created via the Kibble-Zurek mechanism, when the temperature of a gas of sodium atoms is quenched across the BEC transition, and are imaged after a free expansion of the condensate. By using the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, we calculate the in-trap density and phase distributions characterizing a SV in the crossover from an elongate quasi-1D to a bulk 3D regime. The simulations show that the free expansion strongly amplifies the key features of a SV and produces a remarkable twist of the solitonic plane due to the quantized vorticity associated with the defect. Good agreement is found between simulations and experiments.
Long-lived, spatially localized, and temporally oscillating nonlinear excitations are predicted by numerical simulation of coupled Gross-Pitaevskii equations. These oscillons closely resemble the time-periodic breather solutions of the sine-Gordon equation but decay slowly by radiating Bogoliubov phonons. Their time-dependent profile is closely matched with solutions of the sine-Gordon equation, which emerges as an effective field theory for the relative phase of two linearly coupled Bose fields in the weak-coupling limit. For strong coupling the long-lived oscillons persist and involve both relative and total phase fields. The oscillons decay via Bogoliubov phonon radiation that is increasingly suppressed for decreasing oscillon amplitude. Possibilities for creating oscillons are addressed in atomic gas experiments by collision of oppositely charged Bose-Josephson vortices and direct phase imprinting.
The problem of understanding how a coherent, macroscopic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) emerges from the cooling of a thermal Bose gas has attracted significant theoretical and experimental interest over several decades. The pioneering achievement of BEC in weakly-interacting dilute atomic gases in 1995 was followed by a number of experimental studies examining the growth of the BEC number, as well as the development of its coherence. More recently there has been interest in connecting such experiments to universal aspects of nonequilibrium phase transitions, in terms of both static and dynamical critical exponents. Here, the spontaneous formation of topological structures such as vortices and solitons in quenched cold-atom experiments has enabled the verification of the Kibble-Zurek mechanism predicting the density of topological defects in continuous phase transitions, first proposed in the context of the evolution of the early universe. This chapter reviews progress in the understanding of BEC formation, and discusses open questions and future research directions in the dynamics of phase transitions in quantum gases.