No Arabic abstract
While the Gross--Pitaevskii equation is well-established as the canonical dynamical description of atomic Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) at zero-temperature, describing the dynamics of BECs at finite temperatures remains a difficult theoretical problem, particularly when considering low-temperature, non-equilibrium systems in which depletion of the condensate occurs dynamically as a result of external driving. In this paper, we describe a fully time-dependent numerical implementation of a second-order, number-conserving description of finite-temperature BEC dynamics. This description consists of equations of motion describing the coupled dynamics of the condensate and non-condensate fractions in a self-consistent manner, and is ideally suited for the study of low-temperature, non-equilibrium, driven systems. The delta-kicked-rotor BEC provides a prototypical example of such a system, and we demonstrate the efficacy of our numerical implementation by investigating its dynamics at finite temperature. We demonstrate that the qualitative features of the system dynamics at zero temperature are generally preserved at finite temperatures, and predict a quantitative finite-temperature shift of resonance frequencies which would be relevant for, and could be verified by, future experiments.
We develop the number-conserving approach that has previously been used in a single component Bose-Einstein condensed dilute atomic gas, to describe consistent coupled condensate and noncondensate number dynamics, to an $n$-component condensate. The resulting system of equations comprises, for each component, of a generalised Gross-Pitaevskii equation coupled to modified Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations. Lower-order approximations yield general formulations for multi-component Gross-Pitaevskii equations, and systems of multi-component Gross-Pitaevskii equations coupled to multi-component modified number-conserving Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations. The analysis is left general, such that, in the $n$-component condensate, there may or may not be mutually coherent components. An expansion in powers of the ratio of noncondensate to condensate particle numbers for each coherent set is used to derive the self-consistent, second-order, dynamical equations of motion. The advantage of the analysis developed in this article is in its applications to dynamical instabilities that appear when two (or more) components are in conflict and where a significant noncondensed fraction of atoms is expected to appear.
We propose a generalization of the Feynman path integral using squeezed coherent states. We apply this approach to the dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensates, which gives an effective low energy description that contains both a coherent field and a squeezing field. We derive the classical trajectory of this action, which constitutes a generalization of the Gross Pitaevskii equation, at linear order. We derive the low energy excitations, which provides a description of second sound in weakly interacting condensates as a squeezing oscillation of the order parameter. This interpretation is also supported by a comparison to a numerical c-field method.
The non-equilibrium spatial dynamics in a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate were excited by controlled miscible-immiscible transition, in which immiscible condensates with domain structures are transferred to the miscible condensates by changing the internal state of 87Rb atoms. The subsequent evolution exhibits the oscillation of spatial structures involving component mixing and separation. We show that the larger total energy of the miscible system results in a higher oscillation frequency. This investigation introduces a new technique to control the miscibility and the spatial degrees of freedom in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates.
We unravel the correlation effects of the second-order quantum phase transitions emerging on the ground state of a harmonically trapped spin-1 Bose gas, upon varying the involved Zeeman terms, as well as its breathing dynamics triggered by quenching the trapping frequency. It is found that the boundaries of the associated magnetic phases are altered in the presence of interparticle correlations for both ferromagnetic and anti-ferromagnetic spin-spin interactions, an effect which becomes more prominent in the few-body scenario. Most importantly, we unveil a correlation-induced shrinking of the anti-ferromagnetic and broken-axisymmetry phases implying that ground states with bosons polarized in a single spin-component are favored. Turning to the dynamical response of the spinor gas it is shown that its breathing frequency is independent of the system parameters while correlations lead to the formation of filamentary patterns in the one-body density of the participating components. The number of filaments is larger for increasing spin-independent interaction strengths or for smaller particle numbers. Each filament maintains its coherence and exhibits an anti-correlated behavior while distinct filaments show significant losses of coherence and are two-body correlated. Interestingly, we demonstrate that for an initial broken-axisymmetry phase an enhanced spin-flip dynamics takes place which can be tuned either via the linear Zeeman term or the quench amplitude.
Ultracold quantum gases provide a unique setting for studying and understanding the properties of interacting quantum systems. Here, we investigate a multi-component system of $^{87}$Rb--$^{39}$K Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) with tunable interactions both theoretically and experimentally. Such multi-component systems can be characterized by their miscibility, where miscible components lead to a mixed ground state and immiscible components form a phase-separated state. Here we perform the first full simulation of the dynamical expansion of this system including both BECs and thermal clouds, which allows for a detailed comparison with experimental results. In particular we show that striking features emerge in time-of-flight for BECs with strong interspecies repulsion, even for systems which were separated in situ by a large gravitational sag. An analysis of the center of mass positions of the BECs after expansion yields qualitative agreement with the homogeneous criterion for phase-separation, but reveals no clear transition point between the mixed and the separated phases. Instead one can identify a transition region, for which the presence of a gravitational sag is found to be advantageous. Moreover we analyze the situation where only one component is condensed and show that the density distribution of the thermal component also show some distinct features. Our work sheds new light on the analysis of multi-component systems after time-of-flight and will guide future experiments on the detection of miscibility in these systems.