Experimental stirring of a toroidally trapped Bose-Einstein condensate at high temperature generates a disordered array of quantum vortices that decays via thermal dissipation to form a macroscopic persistent current [T. W. Neely et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 235301 (2013)]. We perform three-dimensional numerical simulations of the experimental sequence within the stochastic projected Gross-Pitaevskii equation using ab initio determined reservoir parameters. We find that both damping and noise are essential for describing the dynamics of the high-temperature Bose field. The theory gives a quantitative account of the formation of a persistent current, with no fitted parameters.
Experimental stirring of a toroidally trapped Bose-Einstein condensate at high temperature generates a disordered array of quantum vortices that decays via thermal dissipation to form a macroscopic persistent current [T. W. Neely et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 235301 (2013)]. We perform three-dimensional numerical simulations of the experimental sequence within the stochastic projected Gross-Pitaevskii equation using ab initio determined reservoir parameters. We find that both damping and noise are essential for describing the dynamics of the high-temperature Bose field. The theory gives a quantitative account of the formation of a persistent current, with no fitted parameters.
In a recent experiment, Kwon et al. [Phys. Rev. A 90, 063627 (2014)] generated a disordered state of quantum vortices by translating an oblate Bose-Einstein condensate past a laser-induced obstacle and studied the subsequent decay of vortex number. Using mean-field simulations of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, we shed light on the various stages of the observed dynamics. We find that the flow of the superfluid past the obstacle leads initially to the formation of a classical-like wake, which later becomes disordered. Following removal of the obstacle, the vortex number decays due to vortices annihilating and drifting to the boundary. Our results are in excellent agreement with the experimental observations. Furthermore, we probe thermal effects through phenomenological dissipation.
In this thesis we solve the Gross-Pitaevskii equation numerically in order to model the response of trapped Bose-Einstein condensed gases to perturbations by electromagnetic fields. First, we simulate output coupling of pulses from the condensate and compare our results to experiments. The excitation and separation of eigenmodes on flow through a constriction is also studied. We then move on to the main theme of this thesis: the important subject of quantised vortices in Bose condensates, and the relation between Bose-Einstein condensation and superfluidity. We propose methods of producing vortex pairs and rings by controlled motion of objects. Full three-dimensional simulations under realistic experimental conditions are performed in order to test the validity of these ideas. We link vortex formation to drag forces on the object, which in turn is connected with energy transfer to the condensate. We therefore argue that vortex formation by moving objects is intimately related to the onset of dissipation in superfluids. We discuss this idea in the context of a recent experiment, using simulations to provide evidence of vortex formation in the experimental scenario. Superfluidity is also manifest in the property of persistent currents, which is linked to vortex stability and dynamics. We simulate vortex line and ring motion, and find in both cases precessional motion and thermodynamic instability to dissipation. Strictly speaking, the Gross-Pitaevskii equation is valid only for temperatures far below the BEC transition. We end the thesis by describing a simple finite-temperature model to describe mean-field coupling between condensed and non-condensed components of the gas. We show that our hybrid Monte-Carlo/FFT technique can describe damping of the lowest energy excitations of the system. Extensions to this model and future research directions are discussed in the conclusion. (author)
We theoretically investigate the stochastic decay of persistent currents in a toroidal ultracold atomic superfluid caused by a perturbing barrier. Specifically, we perform detailed three-dimensional simulations to model the experiment of Kumar et al. in [Phys. Rev. A 95 021602 (2017)], which observed a strong temperature dependence in the timescale of superflow decay in an ultracold Bose gas. Our ab initio numerical approach exploits a classical-field framework that includes thermal fluctuations due to interactions between the superfluid and a thermal cloud, as well as the intrinsic quantum fluctuations of the Bose gas. In the low-temperature regime our simulations provide a quantitative description of the experimental decay timescales, improving on previous numerical and analytical approaches. At higher temperatures, our simulations give decay timescales that range over the same orders of magnitude observed in the experiment, however, there are some quantitative discrepancies that are not captured by any of the mechanisms we explore. Our results suggest a need for further experimental and theoretical studies into superflow stability.
Providing a complete description of dissipative superfluid dynamics is one of the major challenges of many-body quantum field theory. In this thesis we make a fundamental step towards this goal by implementing the stochastic projected Gross-Pitaevskii equation (SPGPE) in complete form for the first time. The SPGPE is a high-temperature theory of Bose-Einstein condensate dynamics, providing a classical-field description of a low-energy subspace in contact with a thermal reservoir. The reservoir interaction terms account for dissipation and noise from thermal interactions, and arise from two distinct processes described as number-damping and energy-damping. This work advances previous applications of the SPGPE theory, which have only included number-damping processes, by implementing the energy-damping processes. We describe the properties of the deterministic and noise terms corresponding to the energy-damping process, and develop a novel algorithm to accurately and efficiently evaluate the energy-damping terms in the SPGPE. We apply the SPGPE to a range of experimentally accessible systems, considering both non-equilibrium and quasi-equilibrium dynamics. We model the experiment of Neely et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 235301 (2013)], where stirring of a toroidally trapped Bose-Einstein condensate generates a disordered array of quantum vortices that decay, via thermal dissipation, to form a macroscopic persistent current. We perform numerical simulations of the experiment using the number-damping SPGPE and ab initio determined reservoir parameters. We quantitatively reproduce both the formation time and size of the persistent current, as measured in the experiment. In the first application of the full SPGPE, we consider the non-equilibrium dynamics of a condensate excited into a large-amplitude breathing mode. We find that in such non-equilibrium regimes, the energy-damping dominates over the number-damping process, leading to qualitatively different system dynamics. In particular, energy damping causes the system to rapidly reach thermal equilibrium without greatly depleting the condensate, showing that energy damping provides a highly coherent dissipation mechanism. Finally, we apply the SPGPE to the quasi-equilibrium dynamics of single-vortex decay. Energy-damping processes have previously been neglected for this system. SPGPE simulations show that in fact energy-damping has a dominant effect on the lifetime of a single vortex, with lifetimes less than half those predicted by the number-damping SPGPE. In contrast to the breathing mode decay, we observe little qualitative difference between the energy-damping and number-damping descriptions of vortex decay. Our findings show that while energy-damping processes are important to quantitatively describe quasi-equilibrium dynamics, the system behavior may be described by the number-damping SPGPE with a suitably modified dissipation rate.
Recent experiments at the University of Arizona have demonstrated superb control and imaging of flattened superfluids revealing a rich landscape of vortex dynamics. Vortex dipoles have been created and their dynamics observed [Neely et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 160410 (2010)], and highly charged persistent currents have been formed through a clever combination of stirring and dissipation [T. W. Neely, PhD thesis, (2010)]. Many ultra-cold gas systems, including these, are in a regime that we may characterize as quasi-equilibrium: despite some external forcing, a large fraction of the gas remains in thermal equilibrium. In this thesis we use the stochastic projected Gross-Pitaevskii equation (SPGPE) to make quantitative predictions of the quasi-equilibrium Bose gas. \n\nWe quantitatively compare the SPGPE with experiment by modeling the persistent current formation experiment performed at the University of Arizona [T. W. Neely, PhD thesis, (2010)]. We determine all SPGPE parameters for the toroidal system prior to simulation, enabling quantitative modeling of the experiment with no fitting parameters, giving a true test of the SPGPE theory. We find the SPGPE gives quantitative agreement with experiment, accurately predicting the size of the persistent current as well as the decay time of the vortices. We also observe the crucial role that thermal fluctuations have on enabling this agreement, showing the comprehensive SPGPE treatment is necessary to make quantitatively accurate calculations of quasi-equilibrium systems. This is the first quantitative agreement with experimental observations of vortex dynamics obtained with a theory of dissipation from first principles using no fitting parameters.\n\nWe then systematically study the Kelvin mode excitations on a vortex line in a three dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate using the SPGPE. We give a quantitative measure of the magnitude of vortex bending caused by the activation of Kelvin modes, and find that vortex bending can be suppressed by tightening the confinement along the direction of the vortex line. This leads to a strong suppression of the vortex decay rate as the system enters a regime of two-dimensional vortex dynamics, characterized by a critical oblateness.\n\nIn our final application of the SPGPE we simulate the decay of a vortex dipole. We model a recent experiment of Neely et al. [Neely et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 160410 (2010)], finding the SPGPE predicts a dipole lifetime consistent with experimental observations. We also show the experiment lies in the two-dimensional regime of vortex dynamics, validating our critical oblateness calculation.
The decay of a vortex from a nonrotating high temperature Bose-Einstein condensate is modeled using the stochastic projected Gross-Pitaevskii equation (SPGPE). In order to exploit the tunability of temperature in SPGPE theory while maintaining the total atom number constant, we develop a simple and accurate Hartree-Fock method to estimate the SPGPE parameters for systems close to thermal equilibrium. We then calculate the lifetime of a vortex using three classical field theories that describe vortex decay in different levels of approximation. The SPGPE theory is shown to give the most complete description of the decay process, predicting significantly shorter vortex lifetimes than the alternative theories. Using the SPGPE theory to simulate vortex decay for a trapped gas of $5\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}{10}^{5}$ 87Rb atoms, we calculate a vortex lifetime $\mathrm{t\ifmmode \bar{}\else \={}\fi{}}$ that decreases linearly with temperature, falling in the range $20\mathrm{s}>\mathrm{t\ifmmode \bar{}\else \={}\fi{}}>1.5\mathrm{s}$ corresponding to the temperature range $0.78{T}_{c}\ensuremath{\leqslant}T\ensuremath{\leqslant}0.93{T}_{c}$. The vortex lifetimes calculated provide a lower bound for the lifetime of a persistent current with unit winding number in our chosen trap geometry in the limit of vanishing vortex pinning potential.