The collective excitations of Bose condensates in anisotropic axially symmetric harmonic traps are investigated in the hydrodynamic and Thomas-Fermi limit. We identify an additional conserved quantity, besides the axial angular momentum and the total energy, and separate the wave equation in elliptic coordinates. The solution is thereby reduced to the algebraic problem of diagonalizing finite-dimensional matrices. The classical quasiparticle dynamics in the local-density approximation for energies of the order of the chemical potential is shown to be chaotic.
We investigate the zero-temperature collective excitations of a Bose-condensed atomic gas in anisotropic parabolic traps. The condensate density is determined by solving the Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) equation using a spherical harmonic expansion. The GP eigenfunctions are then used to solve the Bogoliubov equations to obtain the collective excitation frequencies and mode densities. The frequencies of the various modes, classified by their parity and the axial angular momentum quantum number, m, are mapped out as a function of the axial anisotropy. Specific emphasis is placed upon the evolution of these modes from the modes in the limit of an isotropic trap.
We develop an analytical approach for calculating the Landau damping of collective modes in the Bose-Einstein condensate trapped by an anisotropic harmonic potential. Based on a variational ground-state wave function obtained by solving the time-independent Gross-Pitaevskii equation beyond Thomas-Fermi approximation, we solve the Bogoliubov--de Gennes equations describing thermal excited quasiparticles and provide divergence-free analytical solutions for the Bogoliubov amplitudes and coupling matrix elements that characterize the interaction between the collective modes and the quasiparticles. With these analytical results we evaluate the Landau damping rates of several collective modes for various anisotropic parameters of the trapping potential in terms of the formulas derived from a time-dependent mean-field theory. In addition, we discuss the dependence of the damping rates on temperature, particle number, trapping frequency, and anisotropic parameter of the system, and compare our theoretical results with experimental and numerical data reported in literature.
We report results for the Thomas-Fermi ground state of a spin-polarized dipolar interacting Bose-Einstein condensate for the case when the external magnetic field
B is not orientated parallel to a principal axis but is aligned parallel to a symmetry plane of a harmonic anisotropic trap. For a dipole interaction strength parameter ${\ensuremath{\varepsilon}}_{D}\ensuremath{\ne}0$ the release energy of the condensate depends on the trap orientation angle ${\ensuremath{\vartheta}}_{T}$ between the principal axis
ez,T of the trap and the field
B. From the quasiclassical Josephson equation of macroscopic quantum physics we determine the low-lying eigenfrequencies of small-amplitude collective modes of the condensate density for various trap frequencies ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{a}$ and trap orientation angles ${\ensuremath{\vartheta}}_{T}$. For the special case of a spherical harmonic trap with trap frequency $\ensuremath{\omega}$ it is rigorously shown for $\ensuremath{-}\frac{1}{2}<{\ensuremath{\varepsilon}}_{D}<1$ that a pure
s-wave symmetry breather excitation of the condensate density exists, that oscillates at a constant frequency ${\ensuremath{\Omega}}_{s}=\sqrt{5}\ensuremath{\omega}$ around the ground-state cloud, despite the well-known fact that the shape of the ground-state cloud of a spin-polarized dipolar condensate is for ${\ensuremath{\varepsilon}}_{D}\ensuremath{\ne}0$ not isotropic. For ${\ensuremath{\vartheta}}_{T}\ensuremath{\ne}0$ the small-amplitude modes of the particle density with isotropic and quadrupolar symmetry consist of two groups. There exist four modes that are combinations of basis functions, with
s-wave, ${d}_{{x}^{2}\ensuremath{-}{y}^{2}}$- and
dz2-wave, and
dxz-wave symmetry, and two modes that are combinations of basis functions with
dyz- and
dxy-wave symmetry. A characteristic difference in the dependence of the frequencies of these six collective modes on the dipole interaction strength parameter ${\ensuremath{\varepsilon}}_{D}$ for prolate and oblate harmonic triaxial traps, respectively, is suggested to be used as an experimental method to measure the
s-wave scattering length
as of the atoms.