arXiv:cond-mat/0311321 · Physical Review A
Damping of Bogoliubov excitations in optical lattices
Shunji Tsuchiya, Allan Griffin
Abstract
Extending recent work to finite temperatures, we calculate the Landau damping of a Bogoliubov excitation in an optical lattice, due to the coupling to a thermal cloud of such excitations. For simplicity, we consider a one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model and restrict ourselves to the first energy band. For energy conservation to be satisfied, the excitations in the collision processes must exhibit ``anomalous dispersion,'' analogous to phonons in superfluid $^{4}\mathrm{He}$. This leads to the disappearance of all damping processes when $U{n}^{\mathrm{c}0}\ensuremath{\geqslant}6J$, where $U$ is the on-site interaction, $J$ is the hopping matrix element, and ${n}^{\mathrm{c}0}(T)$ is the number of condensate atoms at a lattice site. This phenomenon also occurs in two-dimensional and three-dimensional optical lattices. The disappearance of Beliaev damping above a threshold wave vector is noted.