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Physical Review Letters

Coherent Decay of Bose-Einstein Condensates

George Edwin Cragg, Arthur K. Kerman

Published Feb 22, 2007• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Atomic Bose-Einstein condensates are singular forms of matter with the coherence between constituent atoms as a defining characteristic. Although this viewpoint is increasingly validated through experimental findings, the mechanisms behind the observed losses are still understood with classical recombinant collision arguments between particles within the condensate itself. By incorporating a general interparticle interaction into the Hamiltonian, a coherent decay rate can be obtained, thus providing a direct link between the observed losses and the microscopic two-body parameters. Appearing in the lifetime, the interaction strength, lambda, is expressed as lambda=8 pia/(1-delta), where the small parameter delta is obtained from a fit to experimental loss data. Most importantly, the lowest order rate exhibits a novel density dependence (rho{3/2}) that can be identified in low temperature tests.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.98.080405

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Atomic Bose-Einstein condensates are singular forms of matter with the coherence between constituent atoms as a defining characteristic. Although this viewpoint is increasingly validated through experimental findings, the mechanisms behind the observed losses are still understood with classical recombinant collision arguments between particles within the condensate itself. By incorporating a general interparticle interaction into the Hamiltonian, a coherent decay rate can be obtained, thus providing a direct link between the observed losses and the microscopic two-body parameters. Appearing in the lifetime, the interaction strength, lambda, is expressed as lambda=8 pia/(1-delta), where the small parameter delta is obtained from a fit to experimental loss data. Most importantly, the lowest order rate exhibits a novel density dependence (rho{3/2}) that can be identified in low temperature tests.
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We explore the zero-temperature statics of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate in which a Feshbach resonance creates a coupling to a second condensate component of quasibound molecules. Using a variational procedure to find the equation of state, the appearance of this binding is manifest in a collapsing ground state, where only the molecular condensate is present up to some critical density. Further, an excited state is seen to reproduce the usual low-density atomic condensate behavior in this system, but the molecular component is found to produce a coherent, many-body decay, quantified by the imaginary part of the chemical potential. Most importantly, the unique decay rate dependencies on density (approximately rho (3/2)) and on scattering length (approximately (5/2)) can be measured in experimental tests of this result.
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We experimentally and theoretically study phase coherence in two-component Bose-Einstein condensates of ^{87}Rb atoms on an atom chip. Using Ramsey interferometry we determine the temporal decay of coherence between the |F=1,m_{F}=-1⟩ and |F=2,m_{F}=+1⟩ hyperfine ground states. We observe that the coherence is limited by random collisional phase shifts due to the stochastic nature of atom loss. The mechanism is confirmed quantitatively by a quantum trajectory method based on a master equation which takes into account collisional interactions, atom number fluctuations, and losses in the system. This decoherence process can be slowed down by reducing the density of the condensate. Our findings are relevant for experiments on quantum metrology and many-particle entanglement with Bose-Einstein condensates and the development of chip-based atomic clocks.
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