Coherent coupling between atoms and molecules in a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) has been observed. Oscillations between atomic and molecular states were excited by sudden changes in the magnetic field near a Feshbach resonance and persisted for many periods of the oscillation. The oscillation frequency was measured over a large range of magnetic fields and is in excellent quantitative agreement with the energy difference between the colliding atom threshold energy and the energy of the bound molecular state. This agreement indicates that we have created a quantum superposition of atoms and diatomic molecules, which are chemically different species.
We have created a dark quantum superposition state of a Rb Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) and a degenerate gas of Rb$_2$ ground state molecules in a specific ro-vibrational state using two-color photoassociation. As a signature for the decoupling of this coherent atom-molecule gas from the light field we observe a striking suppression of photoassociation loss. In our experiment the maximal molecule population in the dark state is limited to about 100 Rb$_2$ molecules due to laser induced decay. The experimental findings can be well described by a simple three mode model.
We describe the ground state of a large, dilute, neutral atom Bose- Einstein condensate (BEC) doped with N strongly coupled mutually indistinguishable, bosonic neutral atoms (referred to as impurity) in the polaron regime where the BEC density response to the impurity atoms remains significantly smaller than the average density of the surrounding BEC. We find that N impurity atoms (N is not one) can self-localize at a lower value of the impurity-boson interaction strength than a single impurity atom. When the bare short-range impurity-impurity repulsion does not play a significant role, the self-localization of multiple bosonic impurity atoms into the same single particle orbital (which we call co-self-localization) is the nucleation process of the phase separation transition. When the short-range impurity-impurity repulsion successfully competes with co-self-localization, the system may form a stable liquid of self-localized single impurity polarons.
A scissors mode of a rotating Bose-Einstein condensate is investigated both theoretically and experimentally. The condensate is confined in an axi-symmetric harmonic trap, superimposed with a small rotating deformation. For angular velocities larger than $omega_perp/sqrt2 $, where $omega_perp$ is the radial trap frequency, the frequency of the scissors mode is predicted to vanish like the square root of the deformation, due to the tendency of the system to exhibit spontaneous rotational symmetry breaking. Measurements of the frequency confirm the predictions of theory. Accompanying characteristic oscillations of the internal shape of the condensate are also calculated and observed experimentally.
We propose a scheme to control quantum coherence of a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) by a single impurity atom immersed in the BEC. We show that the single impurity atom can act as a single atom valve (SAV) to control quantum coherence of the two-component BEC. It is demonstrated that the SAV can realize the on-demand control over quantum coherence at an arbitrary time. Specially, it is found that the SAV can also control higher-order quantum coherence of two-component BEC. We investigate the long-time evolution of quantum coherence of the two-component BEC. It is indicated that the single impurity atom can induce collapse and revival phenomenon of quantum coherence of the two-component BEC. Collapse-revival configurations of quantum coherence can be manipulated by the initial-state parameters of the impurity atom and the impurity-BEC interaction strengths.
We discuss the effects of quenched disorder in a dilute Bose-Einstein condensate confined in a hard walls trap. Starting from the disordered Gross-Pitaevskii functional, we obtain a representation for the quenched free energy as a series of integer moments of the partition function. Positive and negative disorder-dependent effective coupling constants appear in the integer moments. Going beyond the mean-field approximation, we compute the static two-point correlation functions at first-order in the positive effective coupling constants. We obtain the combined contributions of effects due to boundary conditions and disorder in this weakly disordered condensate. The ground state renormalized density profile of the condensate is presented. We also discuss the appearance of metastable and true ground states for strong disorder, when the effective coupling constants become negative.