Spatially periodic structures of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate

The conditions providing the formation of periodic vortex lattices of an interference nature in an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (i.e., in the absence of rotation of the condensate) are determined. Spatially periodic exact solutions of the nonlocal nonlinear Schrödinger equation (the generalized Gross-Pitaevskii equation) that describes the Bose-Einstein condensate of a dilute gas of alkali metal atoms with due regard for the nonlocality of interatomic interactions are obtained in the form of a set of two or three plane waves. It is shown that periodic vortex lattices can be produced in interference experiments with a Bose-Einstein condensate of a dilute gas of alkali metal atoms.     

One-dimensionally inhomogeneous structures of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate

Exact solutions of the generalized stationary one-dimensional Gross-Pitaevski equation taking into account the nonlocality of interatomic interactions in a Bose-Einstein condensate were found. These solutions correspond to regimes of bright and dark solitons, as well as to complete and incomplete periodic modulation of the atomic concentration. A regime of complete purely harmonic modulation was revealed. The qualitative analysis of the phase plane of the corresponding equations was performed. The possibility of interpreting the experimentally observed soliton chains as a regime of complete or deep modulation was indicated.     

On the soliton states of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate

Numerical analysis of the one-, two-, and three-dimensional soliton solutions for the modified Gross-Pitaevski equation with regard to the nonlocality of interaction between atoms of a condensate is performed. In calculations of the parameter of interaction nonlocality, the Lennard-Jones potential for collisions between Li atoms in the triplet state was used. It is shown that the nonlocality stabilizes the three-dimensional solitons with sizes in a certain range. The lifetimes of solitons, which are determined by two-and three-particle collisions between atoms, are estimated.     

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.     

Measurements of Tan's contact in an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate

A powerful set of universal relations, centered on a quantity called the contact, connects the strength of short-range two-body correlations to the thermodynamics of a many-body system with zero-range interactions. We report on measurements of the contact, using rf spectroscopy, for an (85)Rb atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). For bosons, the fact that contact spectroscopy can be used to probe the gas on short time scales is useful given the decreasing stability of BECs with increasing interactions. A complication is the added possibility, for bosons, of three-body interactions. In investigating this issue, we have located an Efimov resonance for (85)Rb atoms with loss measurements and thus determined the three-body interaction parameter. In our contact spectroscopy, in a region of observable beyond-mean-field effects, we find no measurable contribution from three-body physics.     

Photon antibunching upon scattering by an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate

Antibunching of photodetections from different modes is shown to arise when two quantized light modes are scattered by an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate. This effect appears because of the uncertainty in the position of the condensate wave function relative to the optical lattice formed by the light beams. It is shown how the information contained in the history of photodetections leads to a spatial localization of the condensate wave function.     

Control of optical dynamic memory capacity of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate

Light storage in an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate is one of the most practical usage of these coherent atom-optical systems. In order to make them even more practical, it is necessary to enhance our ability to inject multiple pulses into the condensate. In this paper, we report that dispersion of pulses injected into the condensate can be compensated by optical nonlinearity. In addition, we will present a brief review of our earlier results in which enhancement of light storage capacity is accomplished by utilizing multi-mode light propagation or choosing an optimal set of experimental parameters.     

Giant optical nonlinearity of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate and low-threshold bistability

The polarization of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate weakly excited by laser radiation at a nearly resonance frequency is determined. The coefficient of nonlinearity (cubic in field) in the refractive index of the condensate is calculated for the slow decay mode due to the spontaneous emission of excited atoms, as well as for the stationary mode, when the loss of atoms is compensated by the injection of atoms into the trap. In both cases, the cubic nonlinearity coefficients of the condensate are several orders of magnitude larger than the corresponding values for known nonlinear media. The conditions for observing hysteresis in an interferometer containing the condensate in the stationary state in the presence of an incident laser beam are specified.     

Lensing and waveguiding of ultraslow pulses in an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate

We investigate lensing and waveguiding properties of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate for ultraslow pulse generated by electromagnetically induced transparency method. We show that a significant time delay can be controllably introduced between the lensed and guided components of the ultraslow pulse. In addition, we present how the number of guided modes supported by the condensate and the focal length can be controlled by the trap parameters or temperature.     

Nonequilibrium properties of an atomic quantum dot coupled to a Bose-Einstein condensate

We study nonequilibrium properties of an atomic quantum dot (AQD) coupled to a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) within Keldysh-Green’s function formalism when the AQD level is varied harmonically in time. Nonequilibrium features in the AQD energy absorption spectrum are the side peaks that develop as an effect of photon absorption and emission. We show that atoms can be efficiently transferred from the BEC into the AQD for the parameter regime of current experiments with cold atoms.     

Bistability of material waves in an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate in a magnetic interferometer

It is shown theoretically that, upon filling a ring cavity (a loop magnetic waveguide) with an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), a hysteresis dependence of the atomic number density inside the cavity on the atomic flux introduced into the cavity from the outside appears. Main parameters of the measuring system being proposed are determined: the reflectance of the magnetic mirror through which the condensate is introduced, the length of the ring cavity, and the strength of the constant magnetic field governing the BEC velocity in the cavity.     

Creating maximally entangled atomic states in a Bose-Einstein condensate

We propose a protocol to create maximally entangled pairs, triplets, quartiles, and other clusters of Bose-condensed atoms starting from a condensate in the Mott insulator state. The essential element is to drive single atom Raman transitions using laser pulses. Our scheme is simple, efficient, and can be readily applied to the recent experimental system as reported by M. Greiner 413, 44 (2002)].     

All-optical formation of molecules with spin degree of freedom in an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate

We have performed a two-photon photoassociation experiment in an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate of ⁸⁷Rb with the spin degree of freedom, which is created by an all-optical method with CO₂ lasers. The spinor character of the created molecules has been revealed by the photoassociation spectrum with a new structure. The hyperfine structure of the created molecules near the dissociation limit is identified by observations of the Zeeman and AC-Stark effects of the molecules. We have also demonstrated the spin-selective creation of molecules. This result would open the new possibility of research on novel molecular spinor BEC.     

Weak coupling regime of the Landau-Zener transition for association of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate

In the framework of a basic semiclassical time-dependent nonlinear two-state problem, we study the weak coupling limit of the nonlinear Landau-Zener transition at coherent photo- and magneto-association of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate. Using an exact third-order nonlinear differential equation for the molecular state probability, we develop a variational approach which enables us to construct an accurate analytic approximation describing time dynamics of the coupled atom-molecular system for the case of weak coupling. The approximation is written in terms of the solution to an auxiliary linear Landau-Zener problem with some effective Landau-Zener parameter. The dependence of this effective parameter on the input Landau-Zener parameter is found to be unexpected: as the generic Landau-Zener parameter increases, the effective Landau-Zener parameter first monotonically increases (starting from zero), reaches its maximal value and then monotonically decreases again reaching zero at some point. The constructed approximation quantitatively well describes many characteristics of the time dynamics of the system, in particular, it provides a highly accurate formula for the final transition probability to the molecular state. The present result for the final transition probability improves the accuracy of the previous approximation by Ishkhanyan et al. [Phys. Rev. A 69, 043612 (2004); J. Phys. A 38, 3505 (2005)] by order of magnitude.     

Monopoles in an antiferromagnetic Bose-Einstein condensate

We show that even in three dimensions an antiferromagnetic spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate, which can, for instance, be created with (23)Na atoms in an optical trap, has not only singular linelike vortex excitations, but also allows for singular pointlike topological excitations, i.e., monopoles similar to the 't Hooft-Polyakov monopoles. We discuss the static and dynamic properties of these monopoles.     

Squeezing of an atom laser originating from atomic Bose-Einstein condensate interacting with light field

The quadrature squeezing properties of an atom laser originating from atomic Bose-Einstein condensate interacting with light field are studied. We find that the squeezing properties of the atom laser are dependent on the initial light field interacting with the atomic Bose-Einstein condensate. If the initial light field cannot be squeezed, such as number state or coherent state light field, the atom laser as well cannot be squeezed. However, if the initial light field interacting with the atomic Bose-Einstein condensate being in squeezed state, the atom laser can be squeezed periodically, and its squeezing depth is dependent on the intensity of interatoms interaction.     

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.     

Quadratic-nonlinear Landau-Zener transition for association of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate with inter-particle elastic interactions included

We study the strong coupling limit of a quadratic-nonlinear Landau-Zener problem for coherent photo- and magneto-association of cold atoms taking into account the atom-atom, atom-molecule, and molecule-molecule elastic scattering. Using an exact third-order nonlinear differential equation for the molecular state probability, we develop a variational approach which enables us to construct a highly accurate and simple analytic approximation describing the time dynamics of the coupled atom-molecule system. We show that the approximation describing time evolution of the molecular state probability can be written as a sum of two distinct terms; the first one, being a solution to a limit first-order nonlinear equation, effectively describes the process of the molecule formation while the second one, being a scaled solution to the linear Landau-Zener problem (but now with negative effective Landau-Zener parameter as long as the strong coupling regime is considered), corresponds to the remaining oscillations which come up when the process of molecule formation is over.     

Production and measurement of Bose-Einstein condensate of 87Rb atomic gas

The research platform for Bose-Einstein condensate in ⁸⁷Rb atomic gas, which is composed of a double MOT configuration and a QUIC trap, was reported. The properties of the condensate were measured both in time-of-flight and in tight confinement by the absorption imaging method. The measurements agreed with the criterions of Bose-Einstein condensation phase transition. About 2×10⁵ atoms were pure condensed. Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 10334050) and the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant Nos. 2001CB309307 and 2006CB921202)     

Superradiant scattering of light from a Bose-Einstein condensate of dilute atomic gases

A generalization of the semiclassical model of superradiant scattering of light from a Bose-Einstein condensate of dilute atomic gases is proposed. A number of effects connected with the backward recoil of atoms in this scattering are explained.