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Physical Review A

Absence of fragmentation of the condensate in a model for bosons in a trap

Ø. Elgarøy, C. J. Pethick

Published Feb 1, 1999• 10 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Possible fragmentation of a Bose-Einstein condensate with negative scattering length is investigated using a simple two-level model. Our results indicate that fragmentation does not take place for values of the coupling for which the system is metastable. We also comment on the possibility of realizing a fragmented condensate in trapping potentials other than an harmonic one.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.59.1711

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Physical Review A•Feb 1, 1996•23 citations
Possible fragmentation of a Bose-Einstein condensate with negative scattering length is investigated using a simple two-level model. Our results indicate that fragmentation does not take place for values of the coupling for which the system is metastable. We also comment on the possibility of realizing a fragmented condensate in trapping potentials other than an harmonic one.
The fragmentation of the ground state of a repulsive condensate immersed into a double-trap potential is found to be a general and critical phenomenon. It takes place for a given number of bosons if their scattering length is larger than some critical value or for a given value of the scattering length if the number of bosons is above some critical number. We demonstrate that the geometry of the inner trap determines these critical parameters while the number of the fragments and the fraction of bosons in the various fragments can be manipulated by the outer trap. There is also a maximal number of bosons for which the ground state is fragmented. If this number is exceeded, the fragmented state becomes a very low-lying excited state of the condensate. This maximal number of bosons can be substantially manipulated by varying the inner and outer traps. To study threefold fragmentation we have chosen a potential well with two barriers as the inner trap and embedded in two types of outer ones. A manifold fragmentation is also addressed.
A Bose-Einstein condensate in an external potential consisting of a superposition of a harmonic and a random potential is considered theoretically. From a semiquantitative analysis we find the size, shape, and excitation energy as a function of the disorder strength. For positive scattering length and sufficiently strong disorder the condensate decays into fragments each of the size of the Larkin length L. This state is stable over a large range of particle numbers. The frequency of the breathing mode scales as 1/L(2). For negative scattering length a condensate of size L may exist as a metastable state. These findings are generalized to anisotropic traps.
We discuss Bose-Einstein condensation in a trapped atomic gas and analyze how the sign of the scattering length a and the ratio \ensuremath{\eta} of the interaction between particles to the level spacing in the trap influence the behavior of the condensate wave function ${\ensuremath{\psi}}_{0}$. We find that for a<0a<0a<0 and $\ensuremath{\eta}\ensuremath{\ll}1$ it is possible to form a metastable Bose condensate, with a long characteristic lifetime with respect to contraction and transitions of particles to excited trap states. For $\ensuremath{\eta}\ensuremath{\gg}1$ a negative scattering length prevents the formation of the condensate. If a>0a>0a>0, then an increase of density is accompanied by the evolution of ${\ensuremath{\psi}}_{0}$ to a comparatively wide quasihomogeneous distribution.
We study properties of the ground state of a bosonic gas of atoms in a tight trap. The atoms interact via model molecular potentials that may have either positive or negative scattering lengths. We discuss the possibility of Bose-Einstein condensation in such a system. We show that when the size of the trap becomes comparable to the correlation length of the condensate, stable Bose-Einstein condensation might occur independent of the sign of the scattering length. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.