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Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe & European Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/Europe-EQEC)

Correlations in ultracold atomic gases

Michael Köhl, Tobias Donner, Stephan Ritter, Thomas Bourdel, Anton Öttl, Tilman Esslinger

Published Jun 1, 2007• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Summary form only given. Phase transitions are among the most dramatic phenomena in nature. Minute variations in the conditions controlling a system trigger a fundamental change of its properties. In the critical regime near a second-order phase transition point the fluctuations of the order parameter are so dominant that they completely govern the behaviour of the system on all length scales. The correlation length of the ultracold gas measures the characteristic length scale of these fluctuations and diverges at the critical temperature. Using cold atomic gases, we have directly observed critical fluctuations of the order parameter near the phase transition of Bose-Einstein condensation. From the divergence of the correlation length of the order parameter versus temperature we have determined its critical exponent v. Despite our densities being ten orders of magnitude smaller and our interactions considerably weaker, we find a remarkable similarity to case of the lambda-transition of helium-4.

DOI
10.1109/cleoe-iqec.2007.4386748

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Summary form only given. Phase transitions are among the most dramatic phenomena in nature. Minute variations in the conditions controlling a system trigger a fundamental change of its properties. In the critical regime near a second-order phase transition point the fluctuations of the order parameter are so dominant that they completely govern the behaviour of the system on all length scales. The correlation length of the ultracold gas measures the characteristic length scale of these fluctuations and diverges at the critical temperature. Using cold atomic gases, we have directly observed critical fluctuations of the order parameter near the phase transition of Bose-Einstein condensation. From the divergence of the correlation length of the order parameter versus temperature we have determined its critical exponent v. Despite our densities being ten orders of magnitude smaller and our interactions considerably weaker, we find a remarkable similarity to case of the lambda-transition of helium-4.
The phase transition of Bose-Einstein condensation was studied in the critical regime, where fluctuations extend far beyond the length scale of thermal de Broglie waves. We used matter-wave interference to measure the correlation length of these critical fluctuations as a function of temperature. Observations of the diverging behavior of the correlation length above the critical temperature enabled us to determine the critical exponent of the correlation length for a trapped, weakly interacting Bose gas to be nu = 0.67 +/- 0.13. This measurement has direct implications for the understanding of second-order phase transitions.
The critical behavior of a system near a continuous phase transition is commonly characterized by power laws and a set of universal critical exponents. Yet universality at phase transitions has even more fundamental manifestations. It dictates that all observables follow universal scaling functions, which may extend beyond simple power laws. Furthermore, microscopic details are captured entirely by only two system-specific scale factors, that rescale any measured quantity onto its universal form. In this work, we report the experimental validation of this prediction in ultracold lattice Bose gases undergoing the superfluid transition. We extract the scale factors by collapsing the order-parameter cumulants measured at varying entropies. We show that these factors specify scaling functions governing both the order-parameter distribution and two-point correlations. By measuring these scaling functions, we also determine three critical exponents βββ, γγγ and ννν. Our results provide an experimental demonstration that universal scaling is simultaneously obeyed by multiple observables in a quantum many-body system.
The transition from a thermal cloud to a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) in an interacting ultra-cold Bose gas is a prototype in a universality class of diverse phase transitions. For a trapped ultra-cold Bose gas, we were able to study the critical regime both above and below the critical temperature with a Talbot–Lau interferometer, observing a peak in the correlation length. From this peak, we managed to determine the universal critical exponents for this phase transition as well as the finite-size and interaction corrections to the critical temperature. The results are all in quantitative agreement with theory. This work demonstrates the potential application of the Talbot–Lau interferometer to a wide range of critical phase transitions in ultra-cold atomic gases.
We report the results of a study of measuring the correlation length at the Lambda critical phase transition point in an ultra-cold Bose gas with a temporal Talbot-Lau (TL) interferometery. Near the critical temperature, the correlation length increase exponentially and its critical exponent factor is measured around 0.67, which is a universal value in quantum gas. In the experiment we filtered the fraction of condensate from the thermal cloud at the Lambda critical phase transition point by means of the TL interferometer technique.
Critical exponents characterize the divergent scaling of thermodynamic quantities near phase transitions and allow for the classification of physical systems into universality classes. While quantum gases thermalizing by interparticle interactions fall into the XY model universality class, the ideal Bose gas has been predicted to form a distinct universality class whose signatures have not yet been revealed experimentally. Here, we report the observation of critical scaling in a two-dimensional trapped quantum gas of essentially noninteracting photons, which thermalize by radiative contact to a reservoir of molecules inside a microcavity. By measuring the spatial correlations near the condensation transition, we determine the critical exponent for the correlation length to be ν=0.52(4)ν= 0.52(4)ν=0.52(4). Our results constitute a first experimental test of the long-standing scaling predictions for the Bose gas universality class.
Ideal Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) remains a paradigmatic example of a continuous phase transition and a cornerstone for understanding quantum degenerate bosonic matter. We demonstrate that critical behavior of the ideal Bose gas near the BEC phase transition falls into three distinct classes, determined exclusively by the low-energy scaling of the density of states. Depending on its scaling exponent, which is controlled by dimensionality and confinement, the transition displays either the usual algebraic divergences of thermodynamic susceptibilities, divergent behavior with marginal logarithmic corrections, or a more subtle form of criticality, where only the correlation length diverges. Our work provides a unified framework for criticality in noninteracting bosonic systems. This classification applies broadly to atomic, photonic, polaritonic, and magnonic condensates, where dimensionality, confinement, and spectral engineering can strongly reshape the density of states.