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Laser Physics

Dynamics of trapped Bose-Einstein condensates: beyond the mean-field

M. K. Olsen, Lev I. Plimak, Vladimir I. Kruglov, J. J. Hope, P. D. Drummond, Matthew J. Collett

Published Jan 1, 2002• 2 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Since dilute Bose gas condensates were first experimentally produced, the Gross-Pitaevskii equation has been successfully used as a descriptive tool. As a mean-field equation, it cannot by definition predict anything about the many-body quantum statistics of condensate. We show here that there are a class of dynamical systems where it cannot even make successful predictions about the mean-field behavior, starting with the process of evaporative cooling by which condensates are formed. Among others are parametric processes, such as photoassociation and dissociation of atomic and molecular condensates.

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In quantum optics, the most interesting processes occur due to nonlinear interactions between the electromagnetic field and various media. The parametric processes which produce nonclassical states of the electromagnetic field have analogs in the processes of photoassociation and dissociation of atomic and molecular Bose-Einstein condensates. Just as the optical processes need a full quantum theoretical treatment in some regimes, we show that photoassociation and dissociation require full quantum treatments to be confident of the theoretical predictions we can make. If the processes take place inside an optical cavity, we show that we may also need to consider the quantum nature of the intracavity electromagnetic field. As the process of intracavity photoassociation that we analyze has no exact mapping onto a Fokker-Planck equation, we show how quantum-field-theoretical techniques can be used to write stochastic difference equations in a generalized positive-P representation, which may be solved numerically.

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Summary form only given. Recent experimental demonstrations of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in trapped dilute alkali gases provide a strong incentive for developing reliable theoretical models of the phenomenon. In this paper, a numerical model based on the Gross-Pitaevskii equation (GPE) is presented that generates self-consistent thermally excited states and allows the process of evaporative cooling to be convincingly simulated.

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Summary form only given. With the realisation of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases, it has been possible to study the dynamics of quantum fields at finite temperatures. The Gross-Pitaevskii equation (GPE) has proved to be a very useful tool for describing Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) and has shown very good agreement with experimental results at low temperatures. In the present paper we apply the mean-field approximation to describe the quantum state of a Bose-Einstein condensate, using a phase-space representation to visualise such a state.

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Equilibrium and Non-Equilibrium Properties of Dilute Bose Gases

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Quantum systems consisting of many particles are both interesting from the physics and the mathematics perspective. One aspect that makes them fascinating from the physics point of view is that they can exhibit quantum effects on macroscopic scales such as Bose-Einstein condensation. This phenomenon, first predicted 100 years ago by Bose [19] and Einstein [44], occurs when a dilute gas of bosons is cooled down to very low temperatures. Below a certain critical temperature a condensate forms, meaning that a macroscopic fraction of the particles is in the same one-particle state, and thus, quantum phenomena become relevant on length scales much larger than the individual atom. The occurrence of Bose-Einstein condensation is also related to superfluidity as suggested in [88]. Bose-Einstein condensation has been achieved experimentally independently by the groups of Cornell and Wieman [3] and Ketterle [40] earning them a Nobel prize in 2001. While Bose and Einstein analyzed theoretically the non-interacting gas, an effective theory describing weakly interacting Bose gases was proposed by Bogoliubov in 1947 with the goal of explaining the occurrence of superfluidity in liquid helium [18]. Using assumptions such as that condensation indeed occurs, his theory yields predictions for the low-energy states of the system. Seen from the mathematics perspective, describing the Bose gas is an interesting challenge due to the strong correlations between particles introduced by the interaction making this case much harder to study than the non-interacting one. In particular, a proof that Bose-Einstein condensation occurs in the thermodynamic limit for continuous systems is still out of reach. However, there has been a lot of work regarding the rigorous analysis of bosonic systems in various relevant regimes. This thesis contains three new contributions establishing rigorous results on bosonic systems in different, physically relevant settings. It is based on the articles [37, 27, 31]. The first result concerns the time-evolution of initially trapped Bose gases in the ultra-dilute Gross-Pitaevskii regime. Under some assumptions on the initial data satisfied in particular by a class of states that are expected to approximate the ground state in a trap, we derive a quasi-free approximation that is close to the true solution in $L^2$-norm. In particular, we show that this approximate wave function is described in terms of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a one-particle state following the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation together with pair excitations with respect to this condensate. As a corollary, we establish a central limit theorem for bounded one-particle observables. The second result is a simple proof of Bose-Einstein condensation for interacting, ultra-dilute gases. More specifically, we consider scalings interpolating between the Gross-Pitaevskii regime and the thermodynamic limit. While condensation had been shown to hold in these regimes before, the advantage of the method used here is its simplicity. Lastly, the third result establishes an upper bound on the ground state energy of a dilute Bose gas in the thermodynamic limit. It captures rigorously the third order correction to the energy per unit volume for sufficiently low densities as predicted in the physics literature first by Wu and subsequently others. $\textit{Full-text embargoed until: 2026-01-01}$

•Dec 9, 2025•0 citations

Mathematical Models and Numerical Methods for Bose-Einstein Condensation

Weizhu Bao

The achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in ultracold vapors of alkali atoms has given enormous impulse to the theoretical and experimental study of dilute atomic gases in condensed quantum states inside magnetic traps and optical lattices. This article offers a short survey on mathematical models and theories as well as numerical methods for BEC based on the mean field theory. We start with the Gross-Pitaevskii equation (GPE) in three dimensions (3D) for modeling one-component BEC of the weakly interacting bosons, scale it to obtain a three-parameter model and show how to reduce it to two dimensions (2D) and one dimension (1D) GPEs in certain limiting regimes. Mathematical theories and numerical methods for ground states and dynamics of BEC are provided. Extensions to GPE with an angular momentum rotation term for a rotating BEC, to GPE with long-range anisotropic dipole-dipole interaction for a dipolar BEC and to coupled GPEs for spin-orbit coupled BECs are discussed. Finally, some conclusions are drawn and future research perspectives are discussed.

arXiv:1403.3884•Mar 16, 2014•10 citations
Since dilute Bose gas condensates were first experimentally produced, the Gross-Pitaevskii equation has been successfully used as a descriptive tool. As a mean-field equation, it cannot by definition predict anything about the many-body quantum statistics of condensate. We show here that there are a class of dynamical systems where it cannot even make successful predictions about the mean-field behavior, starting with the process of evaporative cooling by which condensates are formed. Among others are parametric processes, such as photoassociation and dissociation of atomic and molecular condensates.
In quantum optics, the most interesting processes occur due to nonlinear interactions between the electromagnetic field and various media. The parametric processes which produce nonclassical states of the electromagnetic field have analogs in the processes of photoassociation and dissociation of atomic and molecular Bose-Einstein condensates. Just as the optical processes need a full quantum theoretical treatment in some regimes, we show that photoassociation and dissociation require full quantum treatments to be confident of the theoretical predictions we can make. If the processes take place inside an optical cavity, we show that we may also need to consider the quantum nature of the intracavity electromagnetic field. As the process of intracavity photoassociation that we analyze has no exact mapping onto a Fokker-Planck equation, we show how quantum-field-theoretical techniques can be used to write stochastic difference equations in a generalized positive-P representation, which may be solved numerically.
In experiments, Bose-Einstein condensates are prepared by cooling a dilute Bose gas in a trap. After the phase transition has been reached, the trap is switched off and the evolution of the condensate observed. The evolution is macroscopically described by the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. On the microscopic level, the dynamics of Bose gases are described by the NNN-body Schrödinger equation. We review our article [BdS12] in which we construct a class of initial data in Fock space which are energetically close to the ground state and prove that their evolution approximately follows the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. The key idea is to model two-particle correlations with a Bogoliubov transformation.
Summary form only given. With the realisation of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute gases, it has been possible to study the dynamics of quantum fields at finite temperatures. The Gross-Pitaevskii equation (GPE) has proved to be a very useful tool for describing Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) and has shown very good agreement with experimental results at low temperatures. In the present paper we apply the mean-field approximation to describe the quantum state of a Bose-Einstein condensate, using a phase-space representation to visualise such a state.
Quantum systems consisting of many particles are both interesting from the physics and the mathematics perspective. One aspect that makes them fascinating from the physics point of view is that they can exhibit quantum effects on macroscopic scales such as Bose-Einstein condensation. This phenomenon, first predicted 100 years ago by Bose [19] and Einstein [44], occurs when a dilute gas of bosons is cooled down to very low temperatures. Below a certain critical temperature a condensate forms, meaning that a macroscopic fraction of the particles is in the same one-particle state, and thus, quantum phenomena become relevant on length scales much larger than the individual atom. The occurrence of Bose-Einstein condensation is also related to superfluidity as suggested in [88]. Bose-Einstein condensation has been achieved experimentally independently by the groups of Cornell and Wieman [3] and Ketterle [40] earning them a Nobel prize in 2001. While Bose and Einstein analyzed theoretically the non-interacting gas, an effective theory describing weakly interacting Bose gases was proposed by Bogoliubov in 1947 with the goal of explaining the occurrence of superfluidity in liquid helium [18]. Using assumptions such as that condensation indeed occurs, his theory yields predictions for the low-energy states of the system. Seen from the mathematics perspective, describing the Bose gas is an interesting challenge due to the strong correlations between particles introduced by the interaction making this case much harder to study than the non-interacting one. In particular, a proof that Bose-Einstein condensation occurs in the thermodynamic limit for continuous systems is still out of reach. However, there has been a lot of work regarding the rigorous analysis of bosonic systems in various relevant regimes. This thesis contains three new contributions establishing rigorous results on bosonic systems in different, physically relevant settings. It is based on the articles [37, 27, 31]. The first result concerns the time-evolution of initially trapped Bose gases in the ultra-dilute Gross-Pitaevskii regime. Under some assumptions on the initial data satisfied in particular by a class of states that are expected to approximate the ground state in a trap, we derive a quasi-free approximation that is close to the true solution in L2L^2L2-norm. In particular, we show that this approximate wave function is described in terms of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a one-particle state following the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation together with pair excitations with respect to this condensate. As a corollary, we establish a central limit theorem for bounded one-particle observables. The second result is a simple proof of Bose-Einstein condensation for interacting, ultra-dilute gases. More specifically, we consider scalings interpolating between the Gross-Pitaevskii regime and the thermodynamic limit. While condensation had been shown to hold in these regimes before, the advantage of the method used here is its simplicity. Lastly, the third result establishes an upper bound on the ground state energy of a dilute Bose gas in the thermodynamic limit. It captures rigorously the third order correction to the energy per unit volume for sufficiently low densities as predicted in the physics literature first by Wu and subsequently others. Full-text embargoed until: 2026-01-01\textit{Full-text embargoed until: 2026-01-01}Full-text embargoed until: 2026-01-01
The achievement of Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in ultracold vapors of alkali atoms has given enormous impulse to the theoretical and experimental study of dilute atomic gases in condensed quantum states inside magnetic traps and optical lattices. This article offers a short survey on mathematical models and theories as well as numerical methods for BEC based on the mean field theory. We start with the Gross-Pitaevskii equation (GPE) in three dimensions (3D) for modeling one-component BEC of the weakly interacting bosons, scale it to obtain a three-parameter model and show how to reduce it to two dimensions (2D) and one dimension (1D) GPEs in certain limiting regimes. Mathematical theories and numerical methods for ground states and dynamics of BEC are provided. Extensions to GPE with an angular momentum rotation term for a rotating BEC, to GPE with long-range anisotropic dipole-dipole interaction for a dipolar BEC and to coupled GPEs for spin-orbit coupled BECs are discussed. Finally, some conclusions are drawn and future research perspectives are discussed.