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Physical Review A

Scattering of electrons by a Bose-Einstein condensate of alkali-metal atoms

Haijun Wang, Yi Xue-Xi, Xinwu Ba, Chang-Pu Sun

Published Sep 12, 2001• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The scattering of an incident electron by a pure Bose-Einstein condensate of alkali-metal atoms confined to a three-dimensional harmonic-oscillator potential is investigated to give the corresponding differential cross section. It is shown that for the elastic scattering process the differential cross section is proportional to the square of the number of condensed atoms, and hence can be called the ``coherent scattering.'' For the inelastic scattering process, the stopping power is obtained by considering the state of the center of mass and the internal electronic state of the condensed atom being excited separately and simultaneously, which is found to be proportional to the $\frac{7}{5}$ power of the number of condensed atoms when the binary collision interaction between atoms is taken into account.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.64.043604

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From a theoretical point of view, one of the appealing features of clouds of alkali atom vapours is that particle separations, which are typically of order 10 2 nm, are large compared with the scattering length a which characterizes the strength of interactions. Scattering lengths for alkali atoms are of the order of 100 a 0 , where a 0 , is the Bohr radius, and therefore alkali atom vapours are dilute, in the sense that the dominant effects of interaction are due to two-body encounters. It is therefore possible to calculate properties of the gas reliably from a knowledge of two-body scattering at low energies, which implies that information about atomic scattering is a key ingredient in work on Bose–Einstein condensates. An alkali atom in its electronic ground state has several different hyperfine states, as we have seen in Secs. 3.1 and 3.2. Interatomic interactions give rise to transitions between these states and, as we described in Sec. 4.6, such processes are a major mechanism for loss of trapped atoms. In a scattering process, the internal states of the particles in the initial or final states are described by a set of quantum numbers, such as those for the spin, the atomic species, and their state of excitation. We shall refer to a possible choice of these quantum numbers as a channel.1 At the temperatures of interest for Bose-Einstein condensation, atoms are in their electronic ground states, and the only relevant internal states are therefore the hyperfine states. Because of the existence of several hyperfine states for a single atom, the scattering of cold alkali atoms is a multi-channel problem.

Cambridge University Press eBooks•Nov 29, 2001•0 citations
The scattering of an incident electron by a pure Bose-Einstein condensate of alkali-metal atoms confined to a three-dimensional harmonic-oscillator potential is investigated to give the corresponding differential cross section. It is shown that for the elastic scattering process the differential cross section is proportional to the square of the number of condensed atoms, and hence can be called the ``coherent scattering.'' For the inelastic scattering process, the stopping power is obtained by considering the state of the center of mass and the internal electronic state of the condensed atom being excited separately and simultaneously, which is found to be proportional to the 75\frac{7}{5}57​ power of the number of condensed atoms when the binary collision interaction between atoms is taken into account.
Considering the Fermi gases of alkali-metal atoms that are trapped in a harmonic potential, we study theoretically the elastic and inelastic scattering of the electrons by the trapped Fermi atoms and present the corresponding differential cross sections. We also obtain the stopping power for the cases that the electronic state as well as the center-of-mass state are excited both separately and simultaneously. It is shown that the elastic scattering process is no longer coherent in contrast to the electron scattering by the atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). For the inelastic scattering process, on the other hand, the differential cross section is found to be proportional to the 2/3 power of the number of the trapped atoms. In particular, the trapped fermionic atoms display the effect of ``Fermi surface,'' that is, only the energy levels near the Fermi energy have dominant contributions to the scattering process. Moreover, it is found that the stopping power scales as the 7/6 power of the atomic number. These results are fundamentally different from those of the electron scattering by the atomic BEC, mainly due to the different statistics obeyed by the trapped atomic systems.
The effect of Bose-Einstein condensation, achieved recently for alkaline gases in magnetic traps, should lead to a strong enhancement of non-linear harmonic generation. A nearly resonant light imposed on the gas of two-level atoms excites the intra-atomic transitions and causes generation of various harmonics. Normally, in the thermal state of the gas, a contribution of the inter-atomic interaction to the non-linear harmonic generation is negligible. However, if a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) is present, the inter-particle interaction cannot be ignored. Considering second harmonic generation, we show that, in the presence of the BEC, the intensity of the second harmonic is proportional to (aN n)/sup 2/, where N and n are the total number and the effective density of the condensed atoms, respectively, and a stands for the scattering length describing the process of scattering of two excited atoms by each other so that, after the collision, one excited atom enters the condensate. We consider the interaction between light, represented by the electric field E, and the atomic Bose field /spl Psi/ as well as the two body interaction treated within the scattering length approximation.
From a theoretical point of view, one of the appealing features of clouds of alkali atom vapours is that particle separations, which are typically of order 10 2 nm, are large compared with the scattering length a which characterizes the strength of interactions. Scattering lengths for alkali atoms are of the order of 100 a 0 , where a 0 , is the Bohr radius, and therefore alkali atom vapours are dilute, in the sense that the dominant effects of interaction are due to two-body encounters. It is therefore possible to calculate properties of the gas reliably from a knowledge of two-body scattering at low energies, which implies that information about atomic scattering is a key ingredient in work on Bose–Einstein condensates. An alkali atom in its electronic ground state has several different hyperfine states, as we have seen in Secs. 3.1 and 3.2. Interatomic interactions give rise to transitions between these states and, as we described in Sec. 4.6, such processes are a major mechanism for loss of trapped atoms. In a scattering process, the internal states of the particles in the initial or final states are described by a set of quantum numbers, such as those for the spin, the atomic species, and their state of excitation. We shall refer to a possible choice of these quantum numbers as a channel.1 At the temperatures of interest for Bose-Einstein condensation, atoms are in their electronic ground states, and the only relevant internal states are therefore the hyperfine states. Because of the existence of several hyperfine states for a single atom, the scattering of cold alkali atoms is a multi-channel problem.