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Physical Review Letters

Propagation of Sound in a Bose-Einstein Condensate

Michael R. Andrews, Dan Stamper-Kurn, H.‐J. Miesner, Dallin Durfee, C. G. Townsend, S. Inouye, Wolfgang Ketterle

Published Jul 28, 1997• 444 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Sound propagation has been studied in a magnetically trapped dilute Bose-Einstein condensate. Localized excitations were induced by suddenly modifying the trapping potential using the optical dipole force of a focused laser beam. The resulting propagation of sound was observed using a novel technique, rapid sequencing of nondestructive phase-contrast images. The speed of sound was determined as a function of density and found to be consistent with Bogoliubov theory. This method may generally be used to observe high-lying modes and perhaps second sound.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.79.553

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Sound propagation has been studied in a magnetically trapped dilute Bose-Einstein condensate. Localized excitations were induced by suddenly modifying the trapping potential using the optical dipole force of a focused laser beam. The resulting propagation of sound was observed using a novel technique, rapid sequencing of nondestructive phase-contrast images. The speed of sound was determined as a function of density and found to be consistent with Bogoliubov theory. This method may generally be used to observe high-lying modes and perhaps second sound.
We study the propagation of a density wave in a magnetically trapped Bose-Einstein condensate at finite temperatures. The thermal cloud is in the hydrodynamic regime and the system is therefore described by the two-fluid model. A phase-contrast imaging technique is used to image the cloud of atoms and allows us to observe small density excitations. The propagation of the density wave in the condensate is used to determine the speed of sound as a function of the temperature. We find the speed of sound to be in good agreement with calculations based on the Landau two-fluid model.
Abstract We recall the experimental data of one-dimensional axial propagation of sound near the center of the Bose-Einstein condensate cloud, which used the optical dipole force method of a focused laser beam and rapid sequencing of nondestructive phase-contrast images. We reanalyze these data within the general quantum fluid framework but without model-specific theoretical assumptions; using the standard best fit techniques. We demonstrate that some of their features cannot be explained by means of the perturbative two-body approximation and Gross-Pitaevskii model, and conjecture possible solutions.
We study two different subjects related to ultra-cold Bose gases. First we study the influence of the trap and the background pressure on particle loss and temperature change for trapped atom clouds. We find the number of particles to exponentially decrease over time due to the imperfect vacuum, while the rate of temperature change differs between a magnetic trap and a far off resonance optical trap. Secondly, we study the properties of a standing sound wave induced in a Bose-Einstein condensate. Phase contrast imaging is used to image the condensate in order to observe the density profile as a function of time. We find that there is coupling between the standing wave and other collective modes. There is a clear relation between the frequencies of these collective modes, and also between the frequencies of these modes and the frequency used to induce the modes. We also find that the amplitude of the standing wave decays over time.
We study the propagation of sound waves in a Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in a one-dimensional optical lattice. We find that the velocity of the propagation of sound wave packets decreases with increasing optical lattice depth, as predicted by the Bogoliubov theory. The strong interplay between nonlinearities and the periodicity of the external potential generates phenomena that are not present in the uniform case. Shock waves, for instance, can propagate slower than sound waves, due to the negative curvature of the dispersion relation. Moreover, nonlinear corrections to the Bogoliubov theory appear to be important even with very small density perturbations, inducing a saturation of the amplitude of the sound signal.
We study the propagation of sound waves in a binary superfluid gas with two symmetric components. The binary superfluid is constituted using a Bose-Einstein condensate of 23Na^{23}\mathrm{Na}23Na in an equal mixture of two hyperfine ground states. Sound waves are excited in the condensate by applying a local spin-dependent perturbation with a focused laser beam. We identify two distinct sound modes, referred to as density sound and spin sound, where the densities of the two spin components oscillate in phase and out of phase, respectively. The observed sound propagation is explained well by the two-fluid hydrodynamics of the binary superfluid. The ratio of the two sound speeds is precisely determined from a timescale analysis of the sound wave propagation, without the need of absolute density calibration, and we find it in quantitatively good agreement with the known interaction properties of the binary system.
Collective excitations of a dilute Bose gas were probed above and below the Bose-Einstein condensation temperature. The temperature dependencies of the frequency and damping rates of condensate oscillations indicate significant interactions between the condensate and the thermal cloud. Hydrodynamic oscillations of the thermal cloud analogous to first sound were observed. An out-of-phase dipolar oscillation of the thermal cloud and the condensate was also studied, analogous to second sound. The excitations were observed in situ using nondestructive imaging techniques.