No Arabic abstract
We study the spatial distributions of the spin and mass currents generated by a moving Gaussian magnetic obstacle in a symmetric, two-component Bose-Einstein condensate in two dimensions. We analytically describe the current distributions for a slow obstacle and show that the spin and the mass currents exhibit characteristic spatial structures resembling those of electromagnetic fields around dipole moments. When the obstacles velocity increases, we numerically observe that the flow pattern maintains its overall structure while the spin polarization induced by the obstacle is enhanced with an increased spin current. We investigate the critical velocity of the magnetic obstacle based on the local criterion of Landau energetic instability and find that it decreases almost linearly as the magnitude of the obstacles potential increases, which can be directly tested in current experiments.
We point out that the widely accepted condition g11g22<g122 for phase separation of a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate is insufficient if kinetic energy is taken into account, which competes against the intercomponent interaction and favors phase mixing. Here g11, g22, and g12 are the intra- and intercomponent interaction strengths, respectively. Taking a d-dimensional infinitely deep square well potential of width L as an example, a simple scaling analysis shows that if d=1 (d=3), phase separation will be suppressed as Lrightarrow0 (Lrightarrowinfty) whether the condition g11g22<g122 is satisfied or not. In the intermediate case of d=2, the width L is irrelevant but again phase separation can be partially or even completely suppressed even if g11g22<g122. Moreover, the miscibility-immiscibility transition is turned from a first-order one into a second-order one by the kinetic energy. All these results carry over to d-dimensional harmonic potentials, where the harmonic oscillator length {xi}ho plays the role of L. Our finding provides a scenario of controlling the miscibility-immiscibility transition of a two-component condensate by changing the confinement, instead of the conventional approach of changing the values of the gs.
A negative effective mass can be realized in quantum systems by engineering the dispersion relation. A powerful method is provided by spin-orbit coupling, which is currently at the center of intense research efforts. Here we measure an expanding spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensate whose dispersion features a region of negative effective mass. We observe a range of dynamical phenomena, including the breaking of parity and of Galilean covariance, dynamical instabilities, and self-trapping. The experimental findings are reproduced by a single-band Gross-Pitaevskii simulation, demonstrating that the emerging features - shockwaves, soliton trains, self-trapping, etc. - originate from a modified dispersion. Our work also sheds new light on related phenomena in optical lattices, where the underlying periodic structure often complicates their interpretation.
We study the dynamics of vortex dipoles in erbium ($^{168}$Er) and dysprosium ($^{164}$Dy) dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) by applying an oscillating blue-detuned laser (Gaussian obstacle). For observing vortex dipoles, we solve a nonlocal Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) equation in quasi two-dimensions in real-time. We calculate the critical velocity for the nucleation of vortex dipoles in dipolar BECs with respect to dipolar interaction strengths. We also show the dynamics of the group of vortex dipoles and rarefaction pulses in dipolar BECs. In the dipolar BECs with Gaussian obstacle, we observe rarefaction pulses due to the interaction of dynamically migrating vortex dipoles.
We use collective oscillations of a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate (2CBEC) of Rb atoms prepared in the internal states $ket{1}equivket{F=1, m_F=-1}$ and $ket{2}equivket{F=2, m_F=1}$ for the precision measurement of the interspecies scattering length $a_{12}$ with a relative uncertainty of $1.6times 10^{-4}$. We show that in a cigar-shaped trap the three-dimensional (3D) dynamics of a component with a small relative population can be conveniently described by a one-dimensional (1D) Schr{o}dinger equation for an effective harmonic oscillator. The frequency of the collective oscillations is defined by the axial trap frequency and the ratio $a_{12}/a_{11}$, where $a_{11}$ is the intra-species scattering length of a highly populated component 1, and is largely decoupled from the scattering length $a_{22}$, the total atom number and loss terms. By fitting numerical simulations of the coupled Gross-Pitaevskii equations to the recorded temporal evolution of the axial width we obtain the value $a_{12}=98.006(16),a_0$, where $a_0$ is the Bohr radius. Our reported value is in a reasonable agreement with the theoretical prediction $a_{12}=98.13(10),a_0$ but deviates significantly from the previously measured value $a_{12}=97.66,a_0$ cite{Mertes07} which is commonly used in the characterisation of spin dynamics in degenerate Rb atoms. Using Ramsey interferometry of the 2CBEC we measure the scattering length $a_{22}=95.44(7),a_0$ which also deviates from the previously reported value $a_{22}=95.0,a_0$ cite{Mertes07}. We characterise two-body losses for the component 2 and obtain the loss coefficients ${gamma_{12}=1.51(18)times10^{-14} textrm{cm}^3/textrm{s}}$ and ${gamma_{22}=8.1(3)times10^{-14} textrm{cm}^3/textrm{s}}$.
We classify the ground states and topological defects of a rotating two-component condensate when varying several parameters: the intracomponent coupling strengths, the intercomponent coupling strength and the particle numbers.No restriction is placed on the masses or trapping frequencies of the individual components. We present numerical phase diagrams which show the boundaries between the regions of coexistence, spatial separation and symmetry breaking. Defects such as triangular coreless vortex lattices, square coreless vortex lattices and giant skyrmions are classified. Various aspects of the phase diagrams are analytically justified thanks to a non-linear $sigma$ model that describes the condensate in terms of the total density and a pseudo-spin representation.