No Arabic abstract
We point out the possibility of having a roton-type excitation spectrum in a quasi-1D Bose-Einstein condensate with dipole-dipole interactions. Normally such a system is quite unstable due to the attractive portion of the dipolar interaction. However, by reversing the sign of the dipolar interaction using either a rotating magnetic field or a laser with circular polarization, a stable cigar-shaped configuration can be achieved whose spectrum contains a `roton minimum analogous to that found in helium II. Dipolar gases also offer the exciting prospect to tune the depth of this `roton minimum by directly controlling the interparticle interaction strength. When the minimum touches the zero-energy axis the system is once again unstable, possibly to the formation of a density wave.
We study a gaseous Bose-Einstein condensate with laser-induced dipole-dipole interactions using the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov theory within the Popov approximation. The dipolar interactions introduce long-range atom-atom correlations, which manifest themselves as increased depletion at momenta similar to that of the laser wavelength, as well as a roton dip in the excitation spectrum. Surprisingly, the roton dip and the corresponding peak in the depletion are enhanced by raising the temperature above absolute zero.
We derive an exact solution to the Thomas-Fermi equation for a Bose-Einstein condensate which has dipole-dipole interactions as well as the usual s-wave contact interaction, in a harmonic trap. Remarkably, despite the non-local anisotropic nature of the dipolar interaction the solution is an inverted parabola, as in the pure s-wave case, but with a different aspect ratio. Various properties such as electrostriction and stability are discussed.
We have investigated the expansion of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of strongly magnetic chromium atoms. The long-range and anisotropic magnetic dipole-dipole interaction leads to an anisotropic deformation of the expanding Cr-BEC which depends on the orientation of the atomic dipole moments. Our measurements are consistent with the theory of dipolar quantum gases and show that a Cr-BEC is an excellent model system to study dipolar interactions in such gases.
We consider a trapped cigar-shaped atomic Bose-Einstein condensate irradiated by a single far-off resonance laser polarized along the cigar axis. The resulting laser induced dipole-dipole interactions between the atoms significantly change size of the condensate, and can even cause its self-trapping.
We produce Bose-Einstein condensates of 6Li2 molecules in a low power (22 W) crossed optical dipole trap. Fermionic 6Li atoms are collected in a magneto-optical trap from a Zeeman slowed atomic beam, then loaded into the optical dipole trap where they are evaporatively cooled to quantum degeneracy. Our simplified system offers a high degree of flexibility in trapping geometry for studying ultracold Fermi and Bose gases.