Critical Velocity in Dilute Trapped BEC

Michael Crescimanno, R. L. Walsworth

Mark Edwards

Chao Feng

This thesis examines the manifestation of the critical velocity for superfluidity in dilute gas Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs). Superfluidity is a macroscopic quantum phenomenon characterised by unique properties such as frictionless flow, high thermal conductivity and the presence of quantised vortices. Our study focuses on what is arguably the most well-known attribute: the ability for an object to move through a superfluid without experiencing a drag force when travelling below a threshold critical velocity.The Landau criterion for superfluidity predicts the critical velocity in a BEC is equal to the speed of sound, and this conclusion is supported by a large body of theoretical work. However, a number of experiments have observed lower critical velocities than theory predicts. In the first part of this thesis, we numerically model experiments on the superfluid critical velocity of an elongated, harmonically trapped Bose-Einstein condensate as reported by [P. Engels and C. Atherton, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 160405 (2007)]. These experiments swept a repulsive obstacle, formed by a optical dipole potential, through the long axis of a condensate at constant velocity. Their results found an increase in the resulting density fluctuations of the condensate above an obstacle velocity of v _ 0:3 mm s

Jonas Siegl, Wolf Weimer, Kai Morgener +3 more

Abdelaziz Radouani

We use the one-dimensional (1D) Gross-Pitaevskii equation to investigate the dynamical evolution of a dilute repulsive Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) confined in an elongated static nonharmonic trap and stirred by an oscillating Gaussian obstacle moving at uniform speed in alternate direction. Direct numerical solutions of this equation show that above a critical obstacle velocity, the motion of the obstacle creates gray solitons and phonons. At first, when the velocity of the obstacle increases, the dissipation also increases. But the dissipation reaches a maximal value and then decreases dramatically and vanishes at high obstacle velocities. Our results at low obstacle velocities are similar to those previously obtained experimentally and by simulations in the case of vortice and phonon production in 3D and 2D trapped repulsive BEC's. But at high obstacle velocities, we show that the quasi-1D trapped repulsive BEC behaves as a quasisuperfluid medium with disappearance of gray soliton and phonon excitations. This extends previous results and provides the main dependence of the phenomenon on the obstacle characteristics.

Tyler W. Neely, E. Carlo Samson, Ashton S. Bradley +2 more

We report experimental observations and numerical simulations of the formation, dynamics, and lifetimes of single and multiply charged quantized vortex dipoles in highly oblate dilute-gas Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs). We nucleate pairs of vortices of opposite charge (vortex dipoles) by forcing superfluid flow around a repulsive Gaussian obstacle within the BEC. By controlling the flow velocity we determine the critical velocity for the nucleation of a single vortex dipole, with excellent agreement between experimental and numerical results. We present measurements of vortex dipole dynamics, finding that the vortex cores of opposite charge can exist for many seconds and that annihilation is inhibited in our trap geometry. For sufficiently rapid flow velocities, clusters of like-charge vortices aggregate into long-lived multiply charged dipolar flow structures.