No Arabic abstract
We study the time coherence of the photoluminescence radiated by spatially indirect excitons confined in a 10 $mu$m electrostatic trap. Above a critical temperature of 1 Kelvin, we show that the photoluminescence has a homogeneous spectral width of about 500 $mu$eV which weakly varies with the exciton density. By contrast, the spectral width reduces by two-fold below the critical temperature and for experimental parameters at which excitons undergo a gray Bose-Einstein condensation. In this regime, we find evidence showing that the excitons temporal coherence is limited by their interaction with a low-concentration of residual excess charges, leading to a minimum photoluminescence spectral width of around 300 $mu$eV.
We study semiconductor excitons confined in an electrostatic trap of a GaAs bilayer heterostructure. We evidence that optically bright excitonic states are strongly depleted while cooling to sub-Kelvin temperatures. In return, the other accessible and optically dark states become macroscopically occupied so that the overall exciton population in the trap is conserved. These combined behaviours constitute the spectroscopic signature for the mostly dark Bose-Einstein condensation of excitons, which in our experiments is restricted to a dilute regime within a narrow range of densities, below a critical temperature of about 1K.
We present theoretical studies of condensation of indirect excitons in a trap. Our model quantifies the effect of screening of the trap potential by indirect excitons on exciton condensation. The theoretical studies are applied to a system of indirect excitons in a GaAs/AlGaAs coupled quantum well structure in a diamond-shaped electrostatic trap where exciton condensation was studied in earlier experiments. The estimated condensation temperature of the indirect excitons in the trap reaches hundreds of milliKelvin.
We present an alternative method for determining the sound velocity in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates, based on thermodynamic global variables. The total number of trapped atoms was as a function of temperature carefully studied across the phase transition, at constant volume. It allowed us to evaluate the sound velocity resulting in consistent values from the quantum to classical regime, in good agreement with previous results found in literature. We also provide some insight about the dominant sound mode (thermal or superfluid) across a wide temperature range.
We report on the attainment of Bose-Einstein condensation with ultracold strontium atoms. We use the 84Sr isotope, which has a low natural abundance but offers excellent scattering properties for evaporative cooling. Accumulation in a metastable state using a magnetic-trap, narrowline cooling, and straightforward evaporative cooling in an optical trap lead to pure condensates containing 1.5x10^5 atoms. This puts 84Sr in a prime position for future experiments on quantum-degenerate gases involving atomic two-electron systems.
We report on the attainment of Bose-Einstein condensation of 86Sr. This isotope has a scattering length of about +800 a0 and thus suffers from fast three-body losses. To avoid detrimental atom loss, evaporative cooling is performed at low densities around 3x10^12 cm^-3 in a large volume optical dipole trap. We obtain almost pure condensates of 5x10^3 atoms.