Atomic Bose-Einstein condensate is heated by atomic losses. The losses act as a heat reservoir for the condensate. The condensate is approaching a state of thermal equilibrium with a thermal depletion ranging from 1% for a uniform three-dimensional (3D) condensate to around 13% for a quasi-1D condensate in a harmonic trap.
We have studied the decay of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of metastable helium atoms in an optical dipole trap. In the regime where two- and three-body losses can be neglected we show that the Bose-Einstein condensate and the thermal cloud show fundamentally different decay characteristics. The total number of atoms decays exponentially with time constant $\ensuremath{\tau}$; however, the thermal cloud decays exponentially with time constant $\frac{4}{3}\ensuremath{\tau}$ and the condensate decays much faster, and nonexponentially. We show that this behavior, which should be present for all BECs in thermal equilibrium with a considerable thermal fraction, is due to a transfer of atoms from the condensate to the thermal cloud during its decay.
Sufficiently strong interactions promote coherent quantum transitions in spite of thermalization and losses, which are the adversaries of delicate effects such as reversibility and correlations. In atomic Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs), strong atom-atom interactions can eject atoms from the BEC to the normal component, yielding quantum depletion instead of temperature depletion. A recent experiment has already been verified to overcome losses. Here I show that it also achieves coherent quantum-depletion dynamics in a BEC swept fast enough from weak to strong atom-atom interactions. The elementary coherent process first excites the normal component into a liquid state that evolves into a spherical shell state, where the atom occupation peaks at a finite momentum to shield 50% of the BEC atoms from annihilation. The identified coherent processes resemble ultrafast semiconductor excitations expanding the scope of BEC explorations to many-body non-equilibrium studies.
Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of an ideal gas is investigated for a finite number of particles. In three dimensions, we find a transition temperature which is lower than in the thermodynamic limit. Lowering the dimension increases the transition temperature and is therefore favorable for BEC. This is in contrast to the standard result obtained in the thermodynamic limit which states that BEC is not possible in, e.g., a one-dimensional (1D) harmonic potential. As a result, 1D atom traps, such as radially tightly confining magnetic traps or optical dipole traps, are promising for studying BEC. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.
Summary form only given.We use quantum kinetic theory to calculate the steady-state and the fluctuations of a trapped Bose-Einstein condensate at finite temperature. We divide the system into two parts. The first part consists of the condensate particles. They are described quantum mechanically using the number-conserving Bogoliubov method that allows us to characterize the condensate by the number of condensed particles. The second part are the noncondensed particles. They are treated as a classical gas in thermal equilibrium. Using quantum kinetic theory we find a master equation for the reduced density operator of the Bose-Einstein condensate. We calculate the steady-state of the system and investigate the effect of one-, two- and three-particle losses on the condensate. Using linearized Ito equations we find expressions for the intensity fluctuations and the amplitude fluctuations in the condensate. The effect of the trap losses on the particle statistics is also studied. We then assume that the condensate particles are coherently pumped into an untrapped internal energy level and fall down in gravity. For this situation we derive the relation between the statistics of the trapped condensate particles and the statistics of the particles arriving at an atom detector positioned below the condensate.
We have observed the Bose-Einstein condensation of an atomic gas in the (quasi)uniform three-dimensional potential of an optical box trap. Condensation is seen in the bimodal momentum distribution and the anisotropic time-of-flight expansion of the condensate. The critical temperature agrees with the theoretical prediction for a uniform Bose gas. The momentum distribution of a noncondensed quantum-degenerate gas is also clearly distinct from the conventional case of a harmonically trapped sample and close to the expected distribution in a uniform system. We confirm the coherence of our condensate in a matter-wave interference experiment. Our experiments open many new possibilities for fundamental studies of many-body physics.
We model the dynamics of condensation in a bimodal trap, consisting of a large reservoir region, and a tight ``dimple'' whose depth can be controlled. Experimental investigations have found that such dimple traps provide an efficient means of achieving condensation. In our kinetic equations, we include two- and three-body processes. The two-body processes populate the dimple, and lead to loss when one of the colliding atoms is ejected from the trap. The three-body processes produce heating and loss. We explain the principal trends, give a detailed description of the dynamics, and provide quantitative predictions for time scales and condensate yields. From these simulations, we extract optimal parameters for future experiments.