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Science

Stirring a Condensate with a Laser

Published Sep 29, 2000• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

An object can move through a superfluid without resistance provided that its speed is below a critical value; higher speeds result in the formation of vortices, which are small volumes of normal fluid and superfluid that rotate and dissipate energy. Although the dynamics of these vortices are considered to be crucial in understanding superfluidity, the strong and complex interactions of the superfluid, dissipative forces, and surface effects in most superfluids (such as liquid helium) all combine to obscure observations.

DOI
10.1126/science.289.5488.2241a

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An object can move through a superfluid without resistance provided that its speed is below a critical value; higher speeds result in the formation of vortices, which are small volumes of normal fluid and superfluid that rotate and dissipate energy. Although the dynamics of these vortices are considered to be crucial in understanding superfluidity, the strong and complex interactions of the superfluid, dissipative forces, and surface effects in most superfluids (such as liquid helium) all combine to obscure observations.
Quantum fluids are able to flow past obstacles without creating drag and through channels without any resistance. This superfluidity is a consequence of Bose–Einstein condensation, a process in which all the particles gather in the same, lowest-energy quantum state. At low flow velocities, energy exchanges between the obstacle and the fluid are forbidden because of the twin requirements of energy and momentum conservation. As the flow speed is increased, however, the superfluidity breaks down at some critical velocity above which excitations in the fluid can occur. These excitations can be phonons (i.e. quantized vibrations), vortices or, in the case of superfluid liquid helium, rotons (see Rotons: a low-temperature puzzle by Russell Donnelly Physics World February 1997 p25)
Tornadoes, waterspouts and other atmospheric vortices are instanriy recognizable, but a detailed microscopic understanding of these phenomena continues to elude scientists. The same is true of vortices in super-fluids such as helium-4. Superfluids can flow without friction at low temperatures because the helium-4 atoms, which are bosons, all accumulate in the same quantum state, forming a Bose-Einstein condensate. Yet the strong interactions between the helium-4 atoms have hindered in-depth studies of the microscopic nature of superfluidity. Now Eric Cornell, Carl Wieman and co-workers at the JILA laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, have created a vortex in a dilute gas of rubidium-87, another Bose-Einstein condensate (M Matthews et at. 1999 Plys. Rev. Lett. 83 2498).
Fluid turbulence remains an open problem in contemporary physics. In gases or liquids encountered in daily life, turbulence is comprised of swirling vortices of varying sizes, shapes and strengths. The impossibility of making detailed predictions of turbulent flows comes, in part, from the complicated nature of these vortices. Turbulence in quantum mechanical superfluids, on the other hand, is comparatively simple. When stirred, a superfluid produces well-defined, discretised vortex lines, and hence turbulence in these fluids is much more straightforward to interpret. As such, there is hope that the study of vortices in superfluids may hold the key to unlocking the mysteries of turbulence.
The ability to support frictionless motion is one of the manifestations of superfluidity. An impurity immersed in a superfluid can move without dissipation below the critical velocity, which, according to the Landau criterion, is determined by the elementary excitation spectrum of the system. In a quantum gas of the ultracold atoms, the critical velocity can be measured by stirring a laser beam through the atomic cloud, and the emergence of dissipation can be observed via the heating effect above the threshold stirring speed. Recently, such a technique is exploited to study the superfluidity of the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of 162Dy atoms with dipole-dipole interactions. It is shown that both the critical velocity and the heating rate reflect the anisotropy of the underlying dipolar excitation spectrum. In this work, we theoretically investigate the anisotropic dissipation of a point-like impurity moving through a dipolar BEC. For the motion along the principal axis, the dissipation rate above the critical velocity is analytically derived according to the linear response theory. At a given reduced velocity, we find the dissipation rate being of a higher value in the direction parallel to the dipole moment, which qualitatively explains the recent experimental observation in dysprosium atoms. Moreover, in the moving direction away from the principal axis, the asymptotic expressions for the dissipation rate are obtained in the high-speed limit, as well as in the regime close to the dissipation threshold. By combining these analytical results with the numerical calculations, we conclude that, in a dipolar BEC, the angular dependence of the dissipation rate always shows the same anisotropy as the critical velocity. Our predictions can be examined in the current experiments with cold atoms, and the results presented here may be also helpful in understanding the anisotropic superfluidity in other systems.