Multi-Component Condensates: Experiment

Boris A. Malomed

K L Lee, N B Jørgensen, L. J. Wacker +4 more

Ultracold quantum gases provide a unique setting for studying and understanding the properties of interacting quantum systems. Here, we investigate a multi-component system of 87 Rb– 39 K Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) with tunable interactions both theoretically and experimentally. Such multi-component systems can be characterized by their miscibility, where miscible components lead to a mixed ground state and immiscible components form a phase-separated state. Here we perform the first full simulation of the dynamical expansion of this system including both BECs and thermal clouds, which allows for a detailed comparison with experimental results. In particular we show that striking features emerge in time-of-flight (TOF) for BECs with strong interspecies repulsion, even for systems which were separated in situ by a large gravitational sag. An analysis of the centre of mass positions of the BECs after expansion yields qualitative agreement with the homogeneous criterion for phase-separation, but reveals no clear transition point between the mixed and the separated phases. Instead one can identify a transition region, for which the presence of a gravitational sag is found to be advantageous. Moreover, we analyse the situation where only one component is condensed and show that the density distribution of the thermal component also shows some distinct features. Our work sheds new light on the analysis of multi-component systems after TOF and will guide future experiments on the detection of miscibility in these systems.

C. J. Pethick, H. Smith

S.-Y. Chen, Y.-S. Wang, B.‐W. Jeng +1 more

We describe multi-parameter continuation methods combined with spectral collocation methods for computing numerical solutions of rotating two-component Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs), which are governed by the Gross–Pitaevskii equations (GPEs). Various types of orthogonal polynomials are used as the basis functions for the trial function space. A novel multi-parameter/multiscale continuation algorithm is proposed for computing the solutions of the governing GPEs, where the chemical potential of each component and angular velocity are treated as the continuation parameters simultaneously. The proposed algorithm can effectively compute numerical solutions with abundant physical phenomena. Numerical results on rotating two-component BECs are reported.

C. J. Pethick, H. Smith