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arXiv:0909.3455 · Physical Review A

Sound propagation in a Bose-Einstein condensate at finite temperatures

R. Meppelink, S. B. Koller, P. van der Straten

Published Oct 12, 2009• 60 citations
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Abstract

We study the propagation of a density wave in a magnetically trapped Bose-Einstein condensate at finite temperatures. The thermal cloud is in the hydrodynamic regime and the system is therefore described by the two-fluid model. A phase-contrast imaging technique is used to image the cloud of atoms and allows us to observe small density excitations. The propagation of the density wave in the condensate is used to determine the speed of sound as a function of the temperature. We find the speed of sound to be in good agreement with calculations based on the Landau two-fluid model.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.80.043605

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We study the propagation of a density wave in a magnetically trapped Bose-Einstein condensate at finite temperatures. The thermal cloud is in the hydrodynamic regime and the system is therefore described by the two-fluid model. A phase-contrast imaging technique is used to image the cloud of atoms and allows us to observe small density excitations. The propagation of the density wave in the condensate is used to determine the speed of sound as a function of the temperature. We find the speed of sound to be in good agreement with calculations based on the Landau two-fluid model.
Sound propagation has been studied in a magnetically trapped dilute Bose-Einstein condensate. Localized excitations were induced by suddenly modifying the trapping potential using the optical dipole force of a focused laser beam. The resulting propagation of sound was observed using a novel technique, rapid sequencing of nondestructive phase-contrast images. The speed of sound was determined as a function of density and found to be consistent with Bogoliubov theory. This method may generally be used to observe high-lying modes and perhaps second sound.
We study the propagation of sound waves in a binary superfluid gas with two symmetric components. The binary superfluid is constituted using a Bose-Einstein condensate of 23Na^{23}\mathrm{Na}23Na in an equal mixture of two hyperfine ground states. Sound waves are excited in the condensate by applying a local spin-dependent perturbation with a focused laser beam. We identify two distinct sound modes, referred to as density sound and spin sound, where the densities of the two spin components oscillate in phase and out of phase, respectively. The observed sound propagation is explained well by the two-fluid hydrodynamics of the binary superfluid. The ratio of the two sound speeds is precisely determined from a timescale analysis of the sound wave propagation, without the need of absolute density calibration, and we find it in quantitatively good agreement with the known interaction properties of the binary system.
In superfluid systems several sound modes can be excited, such as, for example, first and second sound in liquid helium. Here, we excite running and standing waves in a uniform two-dimensional Bose gas and we characterize the propagation of sound in both the superfluid and normal regimes. In the superfluid phase, the measured speed of sound is in good agreement with the prediction of a two-fluid hydrodynamic model, and the weak damping is well explained by the scattering with thermal excitations. In the normal phase we observe a stronger damping, which we attribute to a departure from hydrodynamic behavior.
We study sound propagation in Bose-condensed gases in a highly elongated harmonic trap at finite temperatures. This problem is studied within the framework of the Zaremba-Nikuni-Griffin (ZNG) formalism, which consists of a generalized Gross-Pitaevskii equation for the condensate and a kinetic equation for the thermal cloud. We extend the ZNG formalism to deal with a highly anisotropic trap potential and use it to simulate sound propagation using the trap parameters corresponding to an experiment on sound pulse propagation at finite temperature. We focus on the high-density two-fluid hydrodynamic regime, and explore the possibility of observing first- and second-sound pulse propagation. The results of numerical simulation are compared with analytical results derived from linearized ZNG hydrodynamic equations. We show that the second-sound mode makes the dominant contribution to condensate motion at relatively high temperature, while the first-sound mode makes an appreciable contribution.
We study two different subjects related to ultra-cold Bose gases. First we study the influence of the trap and the background pressure on particle loss and temperature change for trapped atom clouds. We find the number of particles to exponentially decrease over time due to the imperfect vacuum, while the rate of temperature change differs between a magnetic trap and a far off resonance optical trap. Secondly, we study the properties of a standing sound wave induced in a Bose-Einstein condensate. Phase contrast imaging is used to image the condensate in order to observe the density profile as a function of time. We find that there is coupling between the standing wave and other collective modes. There is a clear relation between the frequencies of these collective modes, and also between the frequencies of these modes and the frequency used to induce the modes. We also find that the amplitude of the standing wave decays over time.
Collective excitations of a dilute Bose gas were probed above and below the Bose-Einstein condensation temperature. The temperature dependencies of the frequency and damping rates of condensate oscillations indicate significant interactions between the condensate and the thermal cloud. Hydrodynamic oscillations of the thermal cloud were observed, constituting first sound. An antisymmetric dipolar oscillation of the thermal cloud and the condensate was studied, representing the bulk flow of a superfluid through the normal fluid. The excitations were observed in situ using non-destructive imaging techniques.