New Approach to the Formation of a Bose–Einstein Condensate

Chad N. Weiler

Phase transitions abound in the physical world, from the subatomic length scales of quark condensation to the decoupling forces in the early universe. In the Bose-Einstein condensation phase transition, a gas of trapped bosonic atoms is cooled to a critical temperature. Below this temperature, a macroscopic number of atoms suddenly starts to occupy a single quantum state; these atoms comprise the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). The dynamics of the BEC phase transition are the focus of this dissertation and the experiments described here have provided new information on the details of BEC formation. New theoretical developments are proving to be valuable tools for describing BEC phase transition dynamics and interpreting new experimental results. With their amenability to optical manipulation and probing along with the advent of new microscopic theories, BECs provide an important new avenue for gaining insight into the universal dynamics of phase transitions in general.Spontaneous symmetry breaking in the system's order parameter may be one result of cooling through a phase transition. A potential consequence of this is the spontaneous formation of topological defects, which in a BEC appear as vortices. We experimentally observed and characterized the spontaneous formation of vortices during BEC growth. We attribute vortex creation to coherence length limitations during the initial stages of the phase transition. Parallel to these experimental observations, theory collaborators have used the Stochastic Gross-Pitaevski Equation formalism to simulate the growth of a condensate from a thermal cloud. The experimental and theoretical statistical results of the spontaneous formation of vortex cores during the growth of the condensate are in good quantitative agreement with one another, supporting our understanding of the dynamics of the phase transition. We believe that our results are also qualitatively consistent with the Kibble-Zurek mechanism, a universal model for topological defect formation.Ultimately, our understanding of the dynamics of the BEC phase transition may lead to a broader understanding of phase transitions in general, and provide new insight into the development of coherence in numerous systems.

MJ Davis, TM Wright, T Gasenzer +2 more

R. Lacaze, Pierre Lallemand, Yves Pomeau A +1 more

Junsik Han, Makoto Tsubota

We numerically study the dynamics of quantized vortices in two-dimensional two-component Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) trapped by a box potential. For one-component BECs in a box potential, it is known that quantized vortices form Onsager vortices, which are clusters of same-sign vortices. We confirm that the vortices of the two components spatially separate from each other-even for miscible two-component BECs-suppressing the formation of Onsager vortices. This phenomenon is caused by the repulsive interaction between vortices belonging to different components, hence, suggesting a new possibility for vortex phase separation.

Wolfgang Ketterle

I. Shvarchuck, Ch. Buggle, Dmitry S. Petrov +7 more

We report the formation of Bose-Einstein condensates into nonequilibrium states. Our condensates are much longer than equilibrium condensates with the same number of atoms, show strong phase fluctuations, and have a dynamical evolution similar to that of quadrupole shape oscillations of regular condensates. The condensates emerge in elongated traps as the result of local thermalization when the nucleation time is short compared to the axial oscillation time. We introduce condensate focusing as a new method to extract the phase-coherence length of Bose-Einstein condensates.