Nonlinear dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a magnetic waveguide

We have studied the internal and external dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate in an anharmonic magnetic waveguide. An oscillating condensate experiences a strong coupling between the center of mass motion and the internal collective modes. Because of the anharmonicity of the magnetic potential, not only the center of mass motion shows harmonic frequency generation, but also the internal dynamics exhibit nonlinear frequency mixing. Thereby, the condensate shows shape oscillations with an extremely large change in the aspect ratio of up to a factor of 10. We describe the data with a theoretical model to high accuracy. For strong excitations we test the experimental data for indications of a chaotic behavior.     

Self-organization of a Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical cavity

The spatial self-organization of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in a high-finesse linear optical cavity is discussed. The condensate atoms are laser-driven from the side and scatter photons into the cavity. Above a critical pump intensity the homogeneous condensate evolves into a stable pattern bound by the cavity field. The transition point is determined analytically from a mean-field theory. We calculate the lowest lying Bogoliubov excitations of the coupled BEC-cavity system and the quantum depletion due to the atom-field coupling.     

Nonlinear dynamics of a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate in a double-well potential

We examine the nonlinear dynamical behavior of a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate in a double-well potential. Considering a condensate with large number of atoms, such that it can be described using the mean field theory, we separate the spinor dynamics from the spatial dynamics under the single-mode approximation. We limit ourselves to certain initial conditions under which the spatial mode is frozen so that we can focus on the spinor dynamics only. Identifying collective spin variables of our system, we derive the corresponding nonlinear equations of motion for them. Employing standard stability analysis, we find and characterize fixed points of the system. For a wide range of physical parameters such as tunneling strength and non-linear interactions, as well as for various initial preparations of the system, we identify qualitatively different dynamical regimes possible in the system. In particular, complete and incomplete oscillations of spin variables between quantum wells are found. We also show that by bringing some fixed points close to each other in the phase space of the system, it is possible to induce amplitude modulation to those otherwise regular tunneling oscillations.     

Pulsating instability of a Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical lattice

We find numerically that in the limit of weak atom-atom interactions a Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical lattice may develop a pulsating dynamical instability in which the atoms nearly periodically form a peak in the occupation numbers of the lattice sites, and then return to the unstable initial state. Multiple peaks behaving similarly are also found. Simple arguments show that the pulsating instability is a remnant of integrability, and give a handle on the relevant physical scales.     

Coherence properties of a Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical superlattice

We study the effect of a one dimensional optical superlattice on the superfluid properties (superfluid fraction, number squeezing, dynamic structure factor) and the quasi-momentum distribution of the Mott-insulator. We show that due to the secondary lattice, there is a decrease in the superfluid fraction and the number fluctuation. The dynamic structure factor which can be measured by Bragg spectroscopy is also suppressed due to the addition of the secondary lattice. The visibility of the interference pattern (the quasi-momentum distribution) of the Mott-insulator is found to decrease due to the presence of the secondary lattice. Our results have important implications in atom interferometry and quantum computation in optical lattices.     

Low-acceleration instability of a Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical lattice

We study a Bose-Einstein condensate in a one-dimensional accelerated optical lattice using the mean-field version of the Bose-Hubbard model. Reminiscent of recent experiments [M. Cristiani et al., Opt. Express 12, 4 (2004)], we find a new type of an instability in this system that occurs in the limit when the acceleration is small.     

Quantum instability of a Bose-Einstein condensate with attractive interaction

We study the quantum and the mean-field Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate gas confined in a toroidal trap. According to GP, if the interatomic interaction is attractive, the rotational states of the system can be dynamically stable or unstable depending on the strength of the mean-field energy. The full quantum analysis, however, reveals that the condensate is always unstable. Quantum fluctuations are particularly important close to the GP stability borderline, even for systems with a relatively large number of condensate atoms.     

Effects of three-body atomic interaction and optical lattice on solitons in quasi-one-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate

We make use of a coordinate-free approach to implement Vakhitov-Kolokolov criterion for stability analysis in order to study the effects of three-body atomic recombination and lattice potential on the matter-wave bright solitons formed in Bose-Einstein condensates. We analytically demonstrate that (i) the critical number of atoms in a stable BEC soliton is just half the number of atoms in a marginally stable Townes-like soliton and (ii) an additive optical lattice potential further reduces this number by a factor of √1 − bg ₃ with g ₃ the coupling constant of the lattice potential and b = 0.7301.      

Ultraslow optical waveguiding in an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate

We investigate waveguiding of ultraslow light pulses in an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate. We show that under the conditions of off-resonant electromagnetically induced transparency, waveguiding with a few ultraslow modes can be realized. The number of modes that can be supported by the condensate can be controlled by means of experimentally accessible parameters. Propagation constants and the mode conditions are determined analytically using a Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin analysis. Mode profiles are found numerically.     

Two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical surface trap

We report on the creation of a two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate of cesium atoms in a gravito-optical surface trap. The condensate is produced a few microm above a dielectric surface on an evanescent-wave atom mirror. After evaporative cooling by all-optical means, expansion measurements for the tightly confined vertical motion show energies well below the vibrational energy quantum. The presence of a condensate is observed in two independent ways by a magnetically induced collapse at negative scattering length and by measurements of the horizontal expansion.     

Pinning of vortices in a Bose-Einstein condensate by an optical lattice

We consider the ground state of vortices in a Bose-Einstein condensate. We show that turning on a weak optical periodic potential leads to a transition from the triangular Abrikosov vortex lattice to phases where the vortices are pinned by the optical potential. We discuss the phase diagram of the system for a two-dimensional optical periodic potential with one vortex per optical lattice cell. We also discuss the influence of a one-dimensional optical periodic potential on the vortex ground state. The latter situation has no analog in other condensed-matter systems.     

Klein tunneling of a quasirelativistic Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical lattice

A proof-of-principle experiment simulating effects predicted by relativistic wave equations with ultracold atoms in a bichromatic optical lattice that allows for a tailoring of the dispersion relation is reported. We observe the analog of Klein tunneling, the penetration of relativistic particles through a potential barrier without the exponential damping that is characteristic for nonrelativistic quantum tunneling. Both linear (relativistic) and quadratic (nonrelativistic) dispersion relations are investigated, and significant barrier transmission is observed only for the relativistic case.     

Controllable optical bistability of Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical cavity with a Kerr medium

We study the optical bistability for a Bose-Einstein condensate of atoms in a driven optical cavity with a Kerr medium. We find that both the threshold point of optical bistability transition and the width of optical bistability hysteresis can be controlled by appropriately adjusting the Kerr interaction between the photons. In particular, we show that the optical bistability will disappear when the Kerr interaction exceeds a critical value.     

Nonlinear Landau-Zener tunneling of Bose-Einstein condensate in a spatially magnetic modulated trap

We study tunneling of a Bose-Einstein condensates confined in a effective double-well potential (a single well with a spatially magnetic modulated scattering length, actually), called pseudo double-well trap, in which the interaction of atoms characterized by the s-wave scattering length a _s can be widely tuned with a magnetic-field Feshbach resonance. As a result, corresponding to different nonlinear parameters, the energy levels of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation can have complex structures in their dependence on the bias between the wells. We discuss the emergence of looped levels, which lead to a breakdown of adiabaticity that the Landau-Zener transition probability does not vanish even in the adiabatic limit. Moreover, we also find that the Landau-Zener tunneling in the pseudo trap show many striking properties distinguished from that of the real trap model (where the barrier is created by the external potential). Possible experimental observation in an opticallyinduced photonic lattices in a photorefractive material is suggested.     

Phase diagram for a Bose-Einstein condensate moving in an optical lattice

The stability of superfluid currents in a system of ultracold bosons was studied using a moving optical lattice. Superfluid currents in a very weak lattice become unstable when their momentum exceeds 0.5 recoil momentum. Superfluidity vanishes already for zero momentum as the lattice deep reaches the Mott insulator (MI) phase transition. We study the phase diagram for the disappearance of superfluidity as a function of momentum and lattice depth between these two limits. Our phase boundary extrapolates to the critical lattice depth for the superfluid-to-MI transition with 2% precision. When a one-dimensional gas was loaded into a moving optical lattice a sudden broadening of the transition between stable and unstable phases was observed.     

Superfluid and dissipative dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a periodic optical potential

We create Bose-Einstein condensates of 87Rb in a static magnetic trap with a superimposed blue-detuned 1D optical lattice. By displacing the magnetic trap center we are able to control the condensate evolution. We observe a change in the frequency of the center-of-mass oscillation in the harmonic trapping potential, in analogy with an increase in effective mass. For fluid velocities greater than a local speed of sound, we observe the onset of dissipative processes up to full removal of the superfluid component. A parallel simulation study visualizes the dynamics of the Bose-Einstein condensate and accounts for the main features of the observed behavior.     

Dynamical vortex phases in a Bose-Einstein condensate driven by a rotating optical lattice

We present simulation results of the vortex dynamics in a trapped Bose-Einstein condensate in the presence of a rotating optical lattice. Changing the potential amplitude and the relative rotation frequency between the condensate and the optical lattice, we find a rich variety of dynamical phases of vortices. The onset of these different phases is described by the force balance of a driving force, a pinning force, and vortex-vortex interactions. In particular, when the optical lattice rotates faster than the condensate, an incommensurate effect leads to a vortex-liquid phase supported by the competition between the driving force and the dissipation.     

Superfluid properties of a Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical lattice confined in a cavity

We study the effect of a one dimensional optical lattice in a cavity field with quantum properties on the superfluid dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). In the cavity the influence of atomic backaction and the external driving pump become important and modify the optical potential. Due to the coupling between the condensate wavefunction and the cavity modes, the cavity light field develops a band structure. This study reveals that the pump and the cavity emerges as a new handle to control the superfluid properties of the BEC.     

Controlling chaos in a Bose-Einstein condensate loaded into a moving optical lattice potential

The spatial structure of a Bose-Einstein condensate loaded into an optical lattice potential is investigated, and spatially chaotic distributions of the condensates are revealed. By means of changing of the s-wave scattering length with a Feshbach resonance, the chaotic behavior can be well controlled to enter into periodicity. Numerical simulation shows that there are different periodic orbits according to different s-wave scattering lengths only if the maximal Lyapunov exponent of the system is negative. The text was submitted by the authors in English.     

Bose-Einstein condensate in a random potential

An optical speckle potential is used to investigate the static and dynamic properties of a Bose-Einstein condensate in the presence of disorder. With small levels of disorder, stripes are observed in the expanded density profile and strong damping of dipole and quadrupole oscillations is seen. Uncorrelated frequency shifts of the two modes are measured and are explained using a sum-rules approach and by the numerical solution of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation.