Physical Review A
Propagation of first and second sound in a highly elongated trapped Bose-condensed gas at finite temperatures
Emiko Arahata, Tetsuro Nikuni
Abstract
We study sound propagation in Bose-condensed gases in a highly elongated harmonic trap at finite temperatures. This problem is studied within the framework of the Zaremba-Nikuni-Griffin (ZNG) formalism, which consists of a generalized Gross-Pitaevskii equation for the condensate and a kinetic equation for the thermal cloud. We extend the ZNG formalism to deal with a highly anisotropic trap potential and use it to simulate sound propagation using the trap parameters corresponding to an experiment on sound pulse propagation at finite temperature. We focus on the high-density two-fluid hydrodynamic regime, and explore the possibility of observing first- and second-sound pulse propagation. The results of numerical simulation are compared with analytical results derived from linearized ZNG hydrodynamic equations. We show that the second-sound mode makes the dominant contribution to condensate motion at relatively high temperature, while the first-sound mode makes an appreciable contribution.