Nonlinear dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensates: semiclassical and quantum

Alexander Tovbis, Mark A. Hoefer

Seonghoon Choi, Bala Sundaram

An atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) is often described as a macroscopic object which can be approximated by a coherent state. This, on the surface, would appear to indicate that its behavior should be close to being classical. In this paper, we clarify the extent of how "classical" a BEC is by exploring the semiclassical equations for BECs under the mean field Gaussian approximation. Such equations describe the dynamics of a condensate in the classical limit in terms of the variables < x > and < p > as well as their respective variances. We compare the semiclassical solution with the full quantum solution based on the Gross-Pitaevskii Equation (GPE) and find that the interatomic interactions which generate nonlinearity make the system less "classical." On the other hand, many qualitative features are captured by the semiclassical equations, and the equations to be solved are far less computationally intensive than solving the GPE which make them ideal for providing quick diagnostics, and for obtaining new intuitive insight.

Chuanwei Zhang

Yeong E. Kim, Alexander L. Zubarev

S. A. Gardiner, Dieter Jaksch, Ralph Dum +2 more

We consider the case of a cubic nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation with an additional chaotic potential, in the sense that such a potential produces chaotic dynamics in classical mechanics. We derive and describe an appropriate semiclassical limit to such a nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation, using a semiclassical interpretation of the Wigner function, and relate this to the hydrodynamic limit of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation used in the context of Bose-Einstein condensation. We investigate a specific example of a Gross-Pitaevskii equation with such a chaotic potential, the one-dimensional \ensuremath{\delta}-kicked harmonic oscillator, and its semiclassical limit, discovering in the process an interesting interference effect, where increasing the strength of the repulsive nonlinearity promotes localization of the wave function. We explore the feasibility of an experimental realization of such a system in a Bose-Einstein condensate experiment, giving a concrete proposal of how to implement such a configuration, and considering the problem of condensate depletion.

Benjamin Schlein