Bose-Einstein condensation in interacting gases

We study the occurrence of a Bose-Einstein transition in a dilute gas with repulsive interactions, starting from temperatures above the transition temperature. The formalism, based on the use of Ursell operators, allows us to evaluate the one-particle density operator with more flexibility than in mean-field theories, since it does not necessarily coincide with that of an ideal gas with adjustable parameters (chemical potential, etc.). In a first step, a simple approximation is used (Ursell-Dyson approximation), which allow us to recover results which are similar to those of the usual mean-field theories. In a second step, a more precise treatment of the correlations and velocity dependence of the populations in the system is elaborated. This introduces new physical effects, such as a change of the velocity profile just above the transition: the proportion of atoms with low velocities is higher than in an ideal gas. A consequence of this distortion is an increase of the critical temperature (at constant density) of the Bose gas, in agreement with those of recent path integral Monte-Carlo calculations for hard spheres. Received 13 November 1998     

Splitting between quadrupole modes of dilute quantum gas in a two-dimensional anisotropic trap

We consider quadrupole excitations of quasi-two-dimensional interacting quantum gas in an anisotropic harmonic oscillator potential at zero temperature. Using the time-dependent variational approach, we calculate a few low-lying collective excitation frequencies of a two-dimensional anisotropic Bose gas. Within the energy weighted sum-rule approach, we derive a general dispersion relation of two quadrupole excitations of a two-dimensional deformed trapped quantum gas. This dispersion relation is valid for both statistics. We show that the quadrupole excitation frequencies obtained from both methods are exactly the same. Using this general dispersion relation, we also calculate the quadrupole frequencies of a two-dimensional unpolarized Fermi gas in an anisotropic trap. For both cases, we obtain analytic expressions for the quadrupole frequencies and the splitting between them for arbitrary value of trap deformation. This splitting decreases with increasing interaction strength for both statistics. For a two-dimensional anisotropic Fermi gas, the two quadrupole frequencies and the splitting between them become independent of the particle number within the Thomas-Fermi approach. Received 21 September 2001 and Received in final form 9 December 2001     

Macroscopic oscillations between two weakly coupled Bose-Einstein condensates

We demonstrate, both from a theoretical and an experimental point of view, the possibility of realizing a weak coupling between two Bose-Einstein condensates trapped in different Zeeman states. The weak coupling drives macroscopic quantum oscillations between the condensate populations and the observed current-phase dynamics is described by generalized Josephson equations. In order to highlight the superfluid nature of the oscillations, we investigate the response of a ⁸⁷Rb non-condensate (thermal) gas in the same conditions, showing that the thermal oscillations damp more quickly than those of the condensate. Received 2 May 2002 / Received in final form 19 November 2002 Published online 6 March 2003 RID="a" ID="a"e-mail: smerzi@sissa.it     

Binary mixtures of Bose-Einstein condensates: Phase dynamics and spatial dynamics

We investigate the relative phase coherence properties and the occurrence of demixing instabilities for two mutually interacting and time evolving Bose-Einstein condensates in traps. Our treatment naturally includes the additional decoherence effect due to fluctuations in the total number of particles. Analytical results are presented for the breathe-together solution, an extension of previously known scaling solution to the case of a binary mixture of condensates. When the three coupling constants describing the elastic interactions among the atoms in the two states are close to each other, a dramatic increase of the phase coherence time is predicted. Numerical results are presented for the parameters of the recent JILA experiments. Received 23 April 1999 and Received in final form 21 September 1999     

Fully quantum mechanical moment of inertia of a mesoscopic ideal Bose gas

The superfluid fraction of an atomic cloud is defined using the cloud's response to a rotation of the external potential, i.e. the moment of inertia. A fully quantum mechanical calculation of this moment is based on the dispersion of L_z instead of quasi-classical averages. In this paper we derive analytical results for the moment of inertia of a small number of non-interacting Bosons using the canonical ensemble. The required symmetrized averages are obtained via a representation of the partition function by permutation cycles. Our results are useful to discriminate purely quantum statistical effects from interaction effects in studies of superfluidity and phase transitions in finite samples. Received 30 June 2000     

Quantum corrections to the energy density of a homogeneous Bose gas

Quantum corrections to the properties of a homogeneous interacting Bose gas at zero temperature can be calculated as a low-density expansion in powers of , where is the number density and a is the S-wave scattering length. We calculate the ground state energy density to second order in . The coefficient of the correction has a logarithmic term that was calculated in 1959. We present the first calculation of the constant under the logarithm. The constant depends not only on a, but also on an extra parameter that describes the low energy scattering of the bosons. In the case of alkali atoms, we argue that the second order quantum correction is dominated by the logarithmic term, where the argument of the logarithm is ,and is the length scale set by the van der Waals potential. Received 2 February 1999     

Correlation functions for a Bose-Einstein condensate in the Bogoliubov approximation

In this article we introduce a differential equation for the first order correlation function G ⁽¹⁾ of a Bose-Einstein condensate at T = 0. The Bogoliubov approximation is used. Our approach points out directly the dependence on the physical parameters. Furthermore it suggests a numerical method to calculate G ⁽¹⁾ without solving an eigenvector problem. The G ⁽¹⁾ equation is generalized to the case of non zero temperature. Received 20 September 2000     

Mean field loops versus quantum anti-crossing nets in trapped Bose-Einstein condensates

We study a Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in an asymmetric double well potential. Solutions of the time-independent Gross-Pitaevskii equation reveal intrinsic loops in the energy (or chemical potential) level behavior when the shape of the potential is varied. We investigate the corresponding behavior of the quantum (many-body) energy levels. Applying the two-mode approximation to the bosonic field operators, we show that the quantum energy levels create an anti-crossing net inside the region bounded by the loop of the mean field solution. Received 6 March 2002 / Received in final form 19 September 2002 Published online 15 November 2002 RID="a" ID="a"e-mail: smerzi@cnls.lanl.gov     

Dilute Bose gas: short-range particle correlations and ultraviolet divergence

The modified Bogoliubov model where the primordial interaction is replaced by the t matrix is reinvestigated. It is shown to provide a negative value of the kinetic energy for a strongly interacting dilute Bose gas, contrary to the original Bogoliubov model. To clear up the origin of this failure, the correct values of the kinetic and interaction energies of a dilute Bose gas are calculated. It is demonstrated that both the problem of the negative kinetic energy and the ultraviolet divergence, dating back to the well-known paper of Lee, Yang and Huang, is connected with an inadequate picture of the short-range boson correlations. These correlations are reconsidered within the thermodynamically consistent model proposed earlier by the present authors. Found results are in absolute agreement with the data of the Monte-Carlo calculations for the hard-sphere Bose gas. Received 10 February 2000 and Received in final form 28 November 2000     

Coherent control of the self-trapping transition

We discuss the dynamics of two weakly coupled Bose-Einstein condensates in a double-well potential, contrasting the mean-field picture to the exact N-particle evolution. On the mean-field level, a self-trapping transition occurs when the scaled interaction strength exceeds a critical value; this transition essentially persists in small condensates comprising about 1000 atoms. When the double-well is modulated periodically in time, Floquet-type solutions to the nonlinear Schr?dinger equation take over the role of the stationary mean-field states. These nonlinear Floquet states can be classified as “unbalanced” or “balanced”, depending on whether or not they entail long-time confinement of most particles to one well. Since the emergence of unbalanced Floquet states depends on the amplitude and frequency of the modulating force, we predict that the onset of self-trapping can efficiently be controlled by varying these parameters. This prediction is verified numerically by both mean-field and N-particle calculations. Received 5 November 2000 and Received in final form 16 February 2001     

Phase dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensates: Losses versus revivals

In the absence of losses the phase of a Bose-Einstein condensate undergoes collapses and revivals in time due to elastic atomic interactions. As experiments necessarily involve inelastic collisions, we develop a model to describe the phase dynamics of the condensates in presence of collisional losses. We find that a few inelastic processes are sufficient to damp the revivals of the phase. For this reason the observability of phase revivals for present experimental conditions is limited to condensates with a few hundreds of atoms. Received: 23 February 1998 / Revised: 21 July 1998 / Accepted: 23 July 1998     

Ground state pressure and energy density of an interacting homogeneous Bose gas in two dimensions

We consider an interacting homogeneous Bose gas at zero temperature in two spatial dimensions. The properties of the system can be calculated as an expansion in powers of g, where g is the coupling constant. We calculate the ground state pressure and the ground state energy density to second order in the quantum loop expansion. The renormalization group is used to sum up leading and subleading logarithms from all orders in perturbation theory. In the dilute limit, the renormalization group improved pressure and energy density are expansions in powers of the T ^2B and T ^2Bln(T ^2B), respectively, where T ^2B is the two-body T-matrix. Received 19 April 2002 Published online 13 August 2002     

Bose-Einstein condensates with a bent vortex in rotating traps

We consider a 3D dilute Bose-Einstein condensate at thermal equilibrium in a rotating harmonic trap. The condensate wavefunction is a local minimum of the Gross-Pitaevskii energy functional and we determine it numerically with the very efficient conjugate gradient method. For single vortex configurations in a cigar-shaped harmonic trap we find that the vortex line is bent, in agreement with the numerical prediction of Garcia-Ripoll and Perez-Garcia [Phys. Rev. A 63, 041603 (2001)]. We derive a simple energy functional for the vortex line in a cigar-shaped condensate which allows to understand physically why the vortex line bends and to predict analytically the minimal rotation frequency required to stabilize the bent vortex line. This analytical prediction is in excellent agreement with the numerical results. It also allows to find in a simple way a saddle point of the energy, where the vortex line is in a stationary configuration in the rotating frame but not a local minimum of energy. Finally we investigate numerically the effect of thermal fluctuations on the vortex line for a condensate with a straight vortex: we can predict what happens in a single realization of the experiment by a Monte Carlo sampling of an atomic field quasi-distribution function of the density operator of the gas at thermal equilibrium in the Bogoliubov approximation. Received 28 March 2002 / Received in final form 13 September 2002 Published online 21 January 2003 RID="a" ID="a"e-mail: yvan.castin@lkb.ens.fr     

Kinetic energy of a trapped Fermi gas interacting with a Bose-Einstein condensate

We study a confined mixture of bosons and fermions in the regime of quantal degeneracy, with particular attention to the effects of the interactions on the kinetic energy of the fermionic component. We are able to explore a wide region of system parameters by identifying two scaling variables which completely determine its state at low temperature. These are the ratio of the boson-fermion and boson-boson interaction strengths and the ratio of the radii of the two clouds. We find that the effect of the interactions can be sizeable for reasonable choices of the parameters and that its experimental study can be used to infer the sign of the boson-fermion scattering length. The interplay between interactions and thermal effects in the fermionic kinetic energy is also discussed. Received 13 September 1999 and Received in final form 22 February 2000     

Production of a bose einstein condensate of metastable helium atoms

We recently observed a Bose-Einstein condensate in a dilute gas of ⁴He in the 2³S₁ metastable state. In this article, we describe the successive experimental steps which led to the Bose-Einstein transition at 4.7 μK: loading of a large number of atoms in a MOT, efficient transfer into a magnetic Ioffé-Pritchard trap, and optimization of the evaporative cooling ramp. Quantitative measurements are also given for the rates of elastic and inelastic collisions, both above and below the transition. Received 15 October 2001     

Ground state and vortex states of bosons in an anisotropic trap: A variational approach

We propose a simple variational form of the wave function to describe the ground state and vortex states of a weakly interacting Bose gas in an anisotropic trap. The proposed wave function is valid for a wide range of the particle numbers in the trap. It also works well in the case of attractive interaction between the atoms. Further, it provides an easy and fast method to calculate the physical quantities of interest. The results compare very well with those obtained by purely numerical techniques. Using our wave function we have been able to verify, for the first time, the predicted behaviour of the aspect ratio. Received 7 December 1998 and Received in final form 4 February 1999     

Instanton approach to Josephson tunneling between trapped condensates

An instanton method is proposed to investigate the quantum tunneling between two weakly-linked Bose-Einstein condensates confined in double-well potential traps. We point out some intrinsic pathologies in the earlier treatments of other authors and make an effort to go beyond these very simple zero order models. The tunneling amplitude may be calculated in the Thomas-Fermi approximation and beyond it; we find it depends on the number of the trapped atoms, through the chemical potential. Some suggestions are given for the observation of the Josephson oscillation and the MQST. Received 29 June 2001 and Received in final form 17 September 2001     

Damping and frequency shift in the oscillations of two colliding Bose-Einstein condensates

We have investigated the center-of-mass oscillations of a ⁸⁷Rb Bose-Einstein condensate in an elongated magneto-static trap. We start from a trapped condensate and we transfer part of the atoms to another trapped level, by applying a radio-frequency pulse. The new condensate is produced far from its equilibrium position in the magnetic potential, and periodically collides with the parent condensate. We discuss how both the damping and the frequency shift of the oscillations are affected by the mutual interaction between the two condensates, in a wide range of trapping frequencies. The experimental data are compared with the prediction of a mean-field model. Received 28 May 2001     

Thermodynamics of Bose-condensed atomic hydrogen

We study the thermodynamics of the Bose-condensed atomic hydrogen confined in the Ioffe-Pritchard potential. Such a trapping potential, that models the magnetic trap used in recent experiments with hydrogen, is anharmonic and strongly anisotropic. We calculate the ground-state properties, the condensed and non-condensed fraction and the Bose-Einstein transition temperature. The thermodynamics of the system is strongly affected by the anharmonicity of this external trap. Finally, we consider the possibility to detect Josephson-like currents by creating a double-well barrier with a laser beam. Received 15 February 2000