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arXiv:cond-mat/0104458 · Physical Review Letters

Thermal vs Quantum Decoherence in Double Well Trapped Bose-Einstein Condensates

Лев П. Питаевский, S. Stringari

Published Oct 16, 2001• 148 citations
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Abstract

The quantum and thermal fluctuations of the phase are investigated in a cold Bose gas confined by a double well trap. The coherence of the system is discussed in terms of the visibility of interference fringes in both momentum and coordinate space. The visibility is calculated at zero as well as at finite temperature. The thermal fluctuations are shown to affect significantly the transition from the coherent to the incoherent regime even at very low temperatures. The coherence of an array of multiple condensates is also discussed.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.87.180402

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The effects of quantum and thermal fluctuations upon the fringe structure predicted to be observable in the momentum distribution of coupled Bose-Einstein condensates are studied by the effective-potential method. For a double-well trap, the coherence factor recently introduced by Pitaevskii and Stringari (e-print cond-mat/0104458) is calculated using the effective potential approach and is found in good agreement with their result. The calculations are extended to the case of a one-dimensional array of condensates, showing that quantum effects are essentially described through a simple renormalization of the energy scale in the classical analytical expression for the fringe structure. The consequences for the experimental observability are discussed.
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We present an overview of our recent work describing the treatment of ultracold atomic Bose gases confined to two dimensions in a harmonic trap. We show how the gas goes through a number of regimes as the axially confining potential is increased and discuss the scattering properties of the gas in each of these regimes. We then use the formalism developed to investigate the phase-coherent Bose-Einstein condensate that is present in the trapped two-dimensional gas at temperatures that are low compared to the ideal gas critical temperature and to analyze the first-order coherence as a function of temperature. We identify the regime in which the gas loses its global phase coherence, although a macroscopic occupation of the ground state persists at a temperature well below the ideal gas critical temperature. We comment on the possible connection between this fluctuating regime and the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless phase.
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We discuss thermal and dynamical properties of Bose condensates confined by an external potential. First we analyze the Bose-Einstein transition temperature for an ideal Bose gas in a generic power-law potential and d-dimensional space. Then we investigate the effect of the shape of the trapping potential on the properties of a weakly-interacting Bose condensate. We show that using exotic trapping potentials the condensate can exhibit interesting coherent quantum phenomena, like superfluidity and tunneling. In particular, we consider toroidal and double-well potentials. The theoretical results are compared with recent experiments.