Laser Physics
Instability of Bose-Einstein condensates moving in optical lattices
Kiyohito Iigaya, Satoru Konabe, Ippei Danshita, Tetsuro Nikuni
Abstract
We investigate the Landau damping of Bogoliubov excitations in a dilute Bose gas moving in an optical lattice at a finite temperature. Using a 1D tight-binding model, we explicitly obtain the Landau damping rate, the sign of which determines the stability of the condensate. We find that the sign changes at a certain velocity, which is exactly the same as the critical velocity determined by the Landau criterion of superfluidity. This coincidence reveals the microscopic mechanism of the Landau instability.