Surface modes in a Bose-Einstein condensate of sodium atoms have been studied. We observed excitations of standing and rotating quadrupolar and octopolar modes. The modes were excited with high spatial and temporal resolution using the optical dipole force of a rapidly scanning laser beam. This novel technique is very flexible and should be useful for the study of rotating Bose-Einstein condensates and vortices.
A vortex in a condensate in a nonspherical trapping potential will in general experience a torque. The torque will induce tilting of the direction of the vortex axis. We observe this behavior experimentally and show that by applying small distortions
to the trapping potential, we can control the tilting behaviour. By suppressing vortex tilt, we have been able to hold the vortex axis along the line of sight for up to 15 seconds. Alternatively, we can induce a 180 degree tilt, effectively reversing the charge on the vortex as observed in the lab frame. We characterize the vortex non-destructively with a surface-wave spectroscopic technique.
We have developed an evaporative cooling technique that accelerates the circulation of an ultra-cold $^{87}$Rb gas, confined in a static harmonic potential. As a normal gas is evaporatively spun up and cooled below quantum degeneracy, it is found to
nucleate vorticity in a Bose-Einstein condensate. Measurements of the condensates aspect ratio and surface-wave excitations are consistent with effective rigid-body rotation. Rotation rates of up to 94% of the centrifugal limit are inferred. A threshold in the normal clouds rotation is observed for the intrinsic nucleation of the first vortex. The threshold value lies below the prediction for a nucleation mechanism involving the excitation of surface-waves of the ground-state condensate.
We experimentally and theoretically investigate the lowest-lying axial excitation of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate in a cylindrical box trap. By tuning the atomic density, we observe how the nature of the mode changes from a single-particle exci
tation (in the low-density limit) to a sound wave (in the high-density limit). Throughout this crossover the measured mode frequency agrees with Bogoliubov theory. Using approximate low-energy models we show that the evolution of the mode frequency is directly related to the interaction-induced shape changes of the condensate and the excitation. Finally, if we create a large-amplitude excitation, and then let the system evolve freely, we observe that the mode amplitude decays non-exponentially in time; this nonlinear behaviour is indicative of interactions between the elementary excitations, but remains to be quantitatively understood.
A hydrodynamic description is used to study the zero-temperature properties of a trapped spinor Bose-Einstein condensate in the presence of a uniform magnetic field. We show that, in the case of antiferromagnetic spin-spin interaction, the polar and
ferromagnetic configurations of the ground state can coexist in the trap. These two phases are spatially segregated in such a way that the polar state occupies the inner part while the ferromagnetic state occupies the outer part of the atomic cloud. We also derive a set of coupled hydrodynamic equations for the number density and spin density excitations of the system. It is shown that these equations can be analytically solved for the system in an isotropic harmonic trap and a constant magnetic field. Remarkably, the related low lying excitation spectra are completely determined by the solutions in the region occupied by the polar state. We find that, within the Thomas-Fermi approximation, the presence of a constant magnetic field does not change the excitation spectra which still possess the similar form of that obtained by Stringari.
Bragg diffraction of atoms by light waves has been used to create high momentum components in a Bose-Einstein condensate. Collisions between atoms from two distinct momentum wavepackets cause elastic scattering that can remove a significant fraction
of atoms from the wavepackets and cause the formation of a spherical shell of scattered atoms. We develop a slowly varying envelope technique that includes the effects of this loss on the condensate dynamics described by the Gross-Pitaevski equation. Three-dimensional numerical calculations are presented for two experimental situations: passage of a moving daughter condensate through a non-moving parent condensate, and four-wave mixing of matter waves.