We create supercurrents in annular two-dimensional Bose gases through a temperature quench of the normal-to-superfluid phase transition. We detect the amplitude and the chirality of these supercurrents by measuring spiral patterns resulting from the interference of the cloud with a central reference disk. These measurements demonstrate the stochastic nature of the supercurrents. We further measure their distribution for different quench times and compare it with the predictions based on the Kibble-Zurek mechanism.
We analyze the excitation spectrum of a superfluid Bose-Einstein condensate rotating in a ring trap. We identify two important branches of the spectrum related to outer and inner edge surface modes that lead to the instability of the superfluid. Depending on the initial circulation of the annular condensate, either the outer or the inner modes become first unstable. This instability is crucially related to the superfluid nature of the rotating gas. In particular we point out the existence of a maximal circulation above which the superflow decays spontaneously, which cannot be explained by invoking the average speed of sound.
We theoretically show that the topology of a non-simply-connected annular atomic Bose-Einstein condensate enforces the inner surface waves to be always excited with outer surface excitations and that the inner surface modes are associated with induced vortex dipoles unlike the surface waves of a simply-connected one with vortex monopoles. Consequently, under stirring to drive an inner surface wave, a peculiar population oscillation between the inner and outer surface is generated regardless of annulus thickness. Moreover, a new vortex nucleation process by stirring is observed that can merge the inner vortex dipoles and outer vortex into a single vortex inside the annulus. The energy spectrum for a rotating annular condensate with a vortex at the center also reveals the distinct connection of the Tkachenko modes of a vortex lattice to its inner surface excitations.
We report the observation of dramatic consequences of dimensional reduction onto the motional state of a quantum gas restricted to a curved two-dimensional surface. We start from the ellipsoidal geometry of a dressed quadrupole trap and introduce a novel gravity compensation mechanism enabling to explore the full ellipsoid. The dimensional reduction manifests itself by the spontaneous emergence of an annular shape in the atomic distribution, due to the zero-point energy of the transverse confinement. The experimental results are compared with the solution of the three dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii equation and with a two-dimensional semi-analytical model. This work evidences how a hidden dimension can affect dramatically the embedded low dimensional system by inducing a change of topology.
We study the metastability and decay of multiply-charged superflow in a ring-shaped atomic Bose-Einstein condensate. Supercurrent corresponding to a giant vortex with topological charge up to q=10 is phase-imprinted optically and detected both interferometrically and kinematically. We observe q=3 superflow persisting for up to a minute and clearly resolve a cascade of quantised steps in its decay. These stochastic decay events, associated with vortex-induced $2 pi$ phase slips, correspond to collective jumps of atoms between discrete q values. We demonstrate the ability to detect quantised rotational states with > 99 % fidelity, which allows a detailed quantitative study of time-resolved phase-slip dynamics. We find that the supercurrent decays rapidly if the superflow speed exceeds a critical velocity in good agreement with numerical simulations, and we also observe rare stochastic phase slips for superflow speeds below the critical velocity.
Understanding the relaxation process is the most important unsolved problem in non-equilibrium quantum physics. Current understanding primarily concerns on if and how an isolated quantum many-body system thermalize. However, there is no clear understanding of what conditions and on which time-scale do thermalization occurs. In this article, we simulate the quench dynamics of one-dimensional Bose gas in an optical lattice from an{it {ab initio}} perspective by solving the time-dependent many-boson Schrodinger equation using the multi-configurational time-dependent Hartree method for bosons (MCTDHB). We direct a superfluid (SF) to Mott-insulator (MI) transition by performing two independent quenches: an interaction quench when the interaction strength is changed instantaneously, and a lattice depth quench where the depth of the lattice is altered suddenly. We show that although the Bose-Hubbard model predicts identical physics, the general many-body treatment shows significant differences between the two cases. We observe that lattice depth quench exhibits a large time-scale to reach the MI state and shows an oscillatory phase collapse-revival dynamics and a complete absence of thermalization that reveals through the analysis of the time-evolution of the reduced one-body density matrix, two-body density, and entropy production. In contrast, the interaction quench shows a swift transition to the MI state and shows a clear signature of thermalization for strong quench values. We provide a physical explanation for these differences and prescribe an analytical fitting formula for the time required for thermalization.