Frequency and damping of hydrodynamic modes in a trapped Bose-condensed gas (16 pages)

G. M. Kavoulakis, C. J. Pethick, Smith, H.

Adam Griffin, Edward Taylor

Tetsuro Nikuni, Allan Griffin

Recently it was shown that the Landau-Khalatnikov two-fluid hydrodynamics describes the collision-dominated region of a trapped Bose condensate interacting with a thermal cloud. We use these equations to discuss the low frequency hydrodynamic collective modes in a trapped Bose gas at finite temperatures. We derive variational expressions based on these equations for both the frequency and damping of collective modes. A new feature is our use of frequency-dependent transport coefficients, which produce a natural cutoff by eliminating the collisionless low-density tail of the thermal cloud. Above the superfluid transition, our expression for the damping in trapped inhomogeneous gases is analogous to the result first obtained by Landau and Lifshitz for uniform classical fluids. We also use the moment method to discuss the crossover from the collisionless to the hydrodynamic region. Recent data for the monopole-quadrupole mode in the hydrodynamic region of a trapped gas of metastable ${}^{4}\mathrm{He}$ is discussed. We also present calculations for the damping of the analogous $m=0$ monopole-quadrupole condensate mode in the superfluid phase.

Tetsuro Nikuni, Adam Griffin, E. Zaremba

We extend our recent work on the two-fluid hydrodynamics of the condensate and non-condensate in a trapped Bose gas by including the dissipation associated with viscosity and thermal conduction. For purposes of illustration, we consider the hydrodynamic modes in the case of a uniform Bose gas. A finite thermal conductivity and shear viscosity give rise to a damping of the first and second sound modes in addition to that found previously due to the lack of diffusive equilibrium between the condensate and non-condensate. The relaxational mode associated with this equilibration process is strongly coupled to thermal fluctuations and reduces to the usual thermal diffusion mode above the Bose-Einstein transition. In contrast to the standard Landau two-fluid hydrodynamics, we predict a damped mode centered at zero frequency, in addition to the usual second sound doublet.

Tetsuro Nikuni, Adam Griffin

Onofrio M. Maragò, Gerald Hechenblaikner, E. Hodby +1 more

We have studied the properties of the scissors mode of a trapped Bose-Einstein condensate of 87Rb atoms at finite temperature. We measured a significant shift in the frequency of the mode below the hydrodynamic limit and a strong dependence of the damping rate as the temperature increased. We compared our damping rate results to recent theoretical calculations for other observed collective modes, finding a fair agreement. From the frequency measurements we deduce the moment of inertia of the gas and show that it is quenched below the transition point, because of the superfluid nature of the condensed gas.