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Shock waves in a Bose-Einstein condensate under transverse harmonic confinement

Luca Salasnich

Published Apr 28, 2015• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

We find exact solutions of the hydrodynamic equations of a dilute and ultracold atomic Bose-Einstein condensate confined in the cylindric radial direction by a harmonic potential and freely travelling in the longitudinal axial direction. The dynamics of these solutions, which generalize the ones obtained for a purely one-dimensional superfluid in the regime of quasi-condensation, gives rise to a shock-wave front whose period of formation is analytically estimated. We suggest that these shock waves can be experimentally produced by engineering the initial density and phase of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate.

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We find exact solutions of the hydrodynamic equations of a dilute and ultracold atomic Bose-Einstein condensate confined in the cylindric radial direction by a harmonic potential and freely travelling in the longitudinal axial direction. The dynamics of these solutions, which generalize the ones obtained for a purely one-dimensional superfluid in the regime of quasi-condensation, gives rise to a shock-wave front whose period of formation is analytically estimated. We suggest that these shock waves can be experimentally produced by engineering the initial density and phase of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate.
It is demonstrated that the well-known Smale-horseshoe chaos exists in the time evolution of the one-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) driven by the time-periodic harmonic or inverted-harmonic potential. A formally exact solution of the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation is constructed, which describes the matter shock waves with chaotic or periodic amplitudes and phases. When the periodic driving is switched off and the number of condensed atoms is conserved, we obtained the exact stationary states and nonstationary states. The former contains the stable ``nonpropagated'' shock wave, and in the latter the shock wave alternately collapses and grows for the harmonic trapping or propagates with exponentially increased shock-front speed for the antitrapping. It is revealed that the existence of chaos plays a role for suppressing the blast of matter wave. The results suggest a method for preparing the exponentially accelerated BEC shock waves or the stable stationary states.
We investigate analytically the dynamics of a trapped, quasi-one-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate subject to resonant and nonresonant periodic modulation of the transverse confinement. The dynamics of the condensate is described variationally through a set of coupled ordinary differential equations, and the period of the excited waves is determined analytically using a Mathieu-type analysis. For a modulation frequency equal to that of the radial confinement we show that the predicted period of the resonant wave is in agreement with the existing experimental results. Finally, we present a detailed comparison between the resonant waves and the Faraday waves that emerge outside of resonance.
We investigate the phase effects of a periodically driven Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) held in a spatially two-dimensional (2D) harmonic or inverted-harmonic potential. A formally exact solution of the time-dependent Gross–Pitaevskii equation is found, which depicts the shock wave with chaotic or periodic amplitude and phase. The atomic densities are illustrated numerically, and the circularly symmetric distributions in the separable phase and the axially symmetric BEC clusters in the inseparable phase are shown. It is demonstrated that the periodic driving may lead to chaos for both phases, which plays a role in avoiding the escape of the solution and restraining the BEC collapse and blast. The results suggest a method for controlling the directed transports of the 2D BEC.
Starting from the three-dimensional Gross–Pitaevskii equation we derive a 1D generalized nonpolynomial Schrödinger equation, which describes the dynamics of Bose–Einstein condensates under the action of a generic potential in the longitudinal axial direction and of an anisotropic harmonic potential in the transverse radial direction. This equation reduces to the familiar 1D nonpolynomial Schrödinger equation (Salasnich, Parola and Reatto 2002 Phys. Rev. A 65 , 043614) in the case of isotropic transverse harmonic confinement. In addition, we show that if the longitudinal potential models a periodic optical lattice the 3D GPE can be mapped into a 1D generalized discrete nonpolynomial Schrödinger equation.
A Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) is a quantum fluid that gives rise to interesting shock-wave nonlinear dynamics. Experiments depict a BEC that exhibits behavior similar to that of a shock wave in a compressible gas, e.g., traveling fronts with steep gradients. However, the governing Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) equation that describes the mean field of a BEC admits no dissipation, hence classical dissipative shock solutions do not explain the phenomena. Instead, wave dynamics with small dispersion is considered and it is shown that this provides a mechanism for the generation of a dispersive shock wave (DSW). Computations with the GP equation are compared to experiment with excellent agreement. A comparison between a canonical one-dimensional (1D) dissipative and dispersive shock problem shows significant differences in shock structure and shock-front speed. Numerical results associated with the three-dimensional experiment show that three- and two-dimensional approximations are in excellent agreement and 1D approximations are in good qualitative agreement. Using 1D DSW theory, it is argued that the experimentally observed blast waves may be viewed as dispersive shock waves.