No Arabic abstract
We report evidence for the existence of a supercurrent of magnons in a magnon Bose-Einstein condensate prepared in a room temperature yttrium-iron-garnet magnetic film and subject to a thermal gradient. The magnon condensate is formed in a parametrically populated magnon gas, and its temporal evolution is studied by time-, frequency- and wavector-resolved Brillouin light scattering spectroscopy. It has been found that local heating in the focal point of a probing laser beam enhances the temporal decrease in the density of the freely evolving magnon condensate after the termination of the pumping pulse, but it does not alter the relaxation dynamics of the gaseous magnon phase. This phenomenon is understood as the appearance of a magnon supercurrent within the condensate due to a temperature- and, consequently, magnetisation-gradient induced phase gradient in the condensate wave function.
The alternating current (ac) Josephson effect in a time-independent spatially-inhomogeneous setting is manifested by the occurrence of Josephson oscillations - periodic macroscopic phase-induced collective motions of the quantum condensate. So far, this phenomenon was observed at cryogenic temperatures in superconductors, in superfluid helium, and in Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) of trapped atoms. Here, we report on the discovery of the ac Josephson effect in a magnon BEC carried by a room-temperature ferrimagnetic film. The BEC is formed in a parametrically populated magnon gas in the spatial vicinity of a magnetic trench created by a dc electric current. The appearance of the Josephson effect is manifested by oscillations of the magnon BEC density in the trench, caused by a coherent phase shift between this BEC and the BEC in the nearby regions. Our findings advance the physics of room-temperature macroscopic quantum phenomena and will allow for their application for data processing in magnon spintronics devices.
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.
We measure the mass, gap, and magnetic moment of a magnon in the ferromagnetic $F=1$ spinor Bose-Einstein condensate of $^{87}$Rb. We find an unusually heavy magnon mass of $1.038(2)_mathrm{stat}(8)_mathrm{sys}$ times the atomic mass, as determined by interfering standing and running coherent magnon waves within the dense and trapped condensed gas. This measurement is shifted significantly from theoretical estimates. The magnon energy gap of $htimes 2.5(1)_mathrm{stat}(2)_mathrm{sys};mathrm{Hz}$ and the effective magnetic moment of $-1.04(2)_mathrm{stat}(8),mu_textrm{bare}$ times the atomic magnetic moment are consistent with mean-field predictions. The nonzero energy gap arises from magnetic dipole-dipole interactions.
The appearance of spontaneous coherence is a fundamental feature of a Bose-Einstein condensate and an essential requirement for possible applications of the condensates for data processing and quantum computing. In the case of a magnon condensate in a magnetic crystal, such computing can be performed even at room temperature. So far, the process of coherence formation in a magnon condensate was inaccessible. We study the evolution of magnon radiation spectra by direct detection of microwave radiation emitted by magnons in a parametrically driven yttrium iron garnet crystal. By using specially shaped bulk samples, we show that the parametrically overpopulated magnon gas evolves to a state, whose coherence is only limited by the natural magnon relaxation into the crystal lattice.
Mobile impurities in a Bose-Einstein condensate form quasiparticles called polarons. Here, we show that two such polarons can bind to form a bound bipolaron state. Its emergence is caused by an induced nonlocal interaction mediated by density oscillations in the condensate, and we derive using field theory an effective Schrodinger equation describing this for arbitrarily strong impurity-boson interaction. We furthermore compare with Quantum Monte Carlo simulations finding remarkable agreement, which underlines the predictive power of the developed theory. It is found that bipolaron formation typically requires strong impurity interactions beyond the validity of more commonly used weak-coupling approaches that lead to local Yukawa-type interactions. We predict that the bipolarons are observable in present experiments and describe a procedure to probe their properties.