After almost half a century since the work of Anderson [Phys. Rev. 109, 1492 (1958)], at present there is no well-established theoretical framework for understanding the dynamics of interacting particles in the presence of disorder. Here, we address this problem for interacting bosons near $T=0$, a situation that has been realized in trapped atomic experiments with an optical-speckle disorder. We develop a theoretical model for understanding the hydrodynamic transport of finite-sized Bose-Einstein condensates through disorder potentials. The goal has been to set up a simple model that will retain all the richness of the system yet provide analytic expressions, allowing deeper insight into the physical mechanism. Comparison of our theoretical predictions with the experimental data on large-amplitude dipole oscillations of a condensate in an optical-speckle disorder shows striking agreement. We are able to quantify various dissipative regimes of slow and fast damping. Our calculations provide clear evidence of a reduction in disorder strength due to interactions. The analytic treatment presented here allows us to predict the power law governing the interaction dependence of damping. The corresponding exponents are found to depend sensitively on the dimensionality and are in excellent agreement with experimental observations. Thus, the adeptness of our model in correctly capturing the essential physics of dissipation in such transport experiments is established.
After almost half a century since the work of Anderson [Phys. Rev. 109, 1492 (1958)], at present there is no well-established theoretical framework for understanding the dynamics of interacting particles in the presence of disorder. Here, we address this problem for interacting bosons near T=0, a situation that has been realized in trapped atomic experiments with an optical-speckle disorder. We develop a theoretical model for understanding the hydrodynamic transport of finite-sized Bose-Einstein condensates through disorder potentials. The goal has been to set up a simple model that will retain all the richness of the system yet provide analytic expressions, allowing deeper insight into the physical mechanism. Comparison of our theoretical predictions with the experimental data on large-amplitude dipole oscillations of a condensate in an optical-speckle disorder shows striking agreement. We are able to quantify various dissipative regimes of slow and fast damping. Our calculations provide clear evidence of a reduction in disorder strength due to interactions. The analytic treatment presented here allows us to predict the power law governing the interaction dependence of damping. The corresponding exponents are found to depend sensitively on the dimensionality and are in excellent agreement with experimental observations. Thus, the adeptness of our model in correctly capturing the essential physics of dissipation in such transport experiments is established.
Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) have proven to be remarkable systems with which to study some of the foundational models of condensed matter physics. The observation of a critical velocity for the breakdown of superfluidity in a BEC and the superfluid to Mott insulator transition observed in a BEC trapped by an optical lattice are but two examples of the, by now, dozens of exciting results in this field, which combines theoretical tools from condensed matter physics with state-of-the-art experimental techniques from ultra-cold atomic physics. However, any real condensed matter system has to contend with the effects of disorder, a phenomena notably absent in the inherently clean BEC systems. We have developed and implemented a way to add well characterized disorder in a controlled way to the otherwise clean BEC system using the light field from a laser speckle pattern. Using this system, we have investigated the effects of disorder or a single Gaussian defect, on the collective dipole motion of a BEC of 7Li in an optical trap. In addition, we perform transport experiments on a weakly interacting BEC expanding in a disordered one-dimensional atom wave-guide. We have observed that in such a system, the wave nature of matter can lead to spectacular and counterintuitive phenomena. Specifically, we verify that this system exhibits Anderson localization, a phenomena fundamentally resulting from the interference of multiply scattered matter waves. In such a state, the localized gas behaves as an insulator in a regime where it is classically expected to be conducting.\nWe also present results of experiments regarding a repulsive BEC scattering from a semi-permeable, single defect potential. We investigate the transport properties of such a system with special emphasis on the velocity and defect strength dependent dissipation of the collective dipole motion of the BEC. Finally, we present the results of our experiments on the scattering properties of bright matter wave solitons. We have observed fragmentation of the soliton in a disordered potential as well as both splitting and recombination of a soliton after interacting with a single repulsive defect potential.
We investigate the effects of impurities, either correlated disorder or a single Gaussian defect, on the collective dipole motion of a Bose-Einstein condensate of 7Li in an optical trap. We find that this motion is damped at a rate dependent on the impurity strength, condensate center-of-mass velocity, and interatomic interactions. Damping in the Thomas-Fermi regime depends universally on the disordered potential strength scaled to the condensate chemical potential and the condensate velocity scaled to the speed of sound. The damping rate is comparatively small in the weakly interacting regime, and, in this case, is accompanied by strong condensate fragmentation. In situ and time-of-flight images of the atomic cloud provide evidence that this fragmentation is driven by dark soliton formation.
Superfluidity describes the ability of quantum matter to flow without friction. Due to its fundamental role in many transport phenomena, it is crucial to understand the robustness of superfluid properties to external perturbations. Here, we theoretically study the effects of speckle disorder on the propagation of sound waves in a two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate at zero temperature. We numerically solve the Gross-Pitaevskii equation in the presence of disorder and employ a superfluid hydrodynamic approach to elucidate the role of the compressibility and superfluid fraction in the propagation of sound. A key result is that disorder reduces the superfluid fraction and hence the speed of sound; it also introduces damping and mode coupling. In the limit of weak disorder, the predictions for the speed of sound and its damping rate are well reproduced by a quadratic perturbation theory. The hydrodynamic description is valid over a wide range of parameters, while discrepancies become evident if the disorder becomes too strong, the effect being more significant for disorder applied in only one spatial direction. Our predictions are well within the reach of state-of-the-art cold-atom experiments and carry over to more general disorder potentials.
We theoretically investigate the localization of an expanding Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) with repulsive atom–atom interactions in a disordered potential. We focus on the regime where the initial inter-atomic interactions dominate over the kinetic energy and the disorder. At equilibrium in a trapping potential and for the considered small disorder, the condensate shows a Thomas–Fermi shape modified by the disorder. When the condensate is released from the trap, a strong suppression of the expansion is obtained in contrast to the situation in a periodic potential with similar characteristics. This effect crucially depends on both the momentum distribution of the expanding BEC and the strength of the disorder. For strong disorder as in the experiments reported by Clément et al 2005 Phys. Rev. Lett. 95 170409 and Fort et al 2005 Phys. Rev. Lett. 95 170410, the suppression of the expansion results from the fragmentation of the core of the condensate and from classical reflections from large modulations of the disordered potential in the tails of the condensate. We identify the corresponding disorder-induced trapping scenario for which large atom–atom interactions and strong reflections from single modulations of the disordered potential play central roles. For weak disorder, the suppression of the expansion signals the onset of Anderson localization, which is due to multiple scattering from the modulations of the disordered potential. We compute analytically the localized density profile of the condensate and show that the localization crucially depends on the correlation function of the disorder. In particular, for speckle potentials the long-range correlations induce an effective mobility edge in 1D finite systems. Numerical calculations performed in the mean-field approximation support our analysis for both strong and weak disorder.
We present a theoretical treatment of the surprisingly large damping observed recently in one-dimensional Bose-Einstein atomic condensates in optical lattices. We show that time-dependent Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) calculations can describe qualitatively the main features of the damping observed over a range of lattice depths. We also derive a formula of the fluctuation-dissipation type for the damping, based on a picture in which the coherent motion of the condensate atoms is disrupted as they try to flow through the random local potential created by the irregular motion of noncondensate atoms. When parameters for the characteristic strength and correlation times of the fluctuations, obtained from the HFB calculations, are substituted in the damping formula, we find very good agreement with the experimentally observed damping, as long as the lattice is shallow enough for the fraction of atoms in the Mott insulator phase to be negligible. We also include, for completeness, the results of other calculations based on the Gutzwiller ansatz, which appear to work better for the deeper lattices.
We investigate the dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate in the presence of a random potential created by optical speckles. We first consider the effect of a weak disorder on the dipole and quadrupole collective oscillations, finding uncorrelated frequency shifts of the two modes with respect to the pure harmonic case. This behavior, predicted by a sum-rules approach, is confirmed by the numerical solution of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. Then we analyze the role of disorder on the one-dimensional expansion in an optical guide, discussing possible localization effects. Our theoretical analysis provides a useful insight into the recent experiments performed at LENS [J. E. Lye, L. Fallani, M. Modugno, D. S. Wiersma, C. Fort, and M. Inguscio, Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 070401 (2005); C. Fort, L. Fallani, V. Guarrera, J. E. Lye, M. Modugno, D. S. Wiersma, and M. Inguscio, Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 170410 (2005)].