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arXiv:cond-mat/9908340

Surface Excitations in a Bose-Einstein Condensate

Roberto Onofrio, Dallin Durfee, Chandra Raman, Michael Köhl, Chris Kuklewicz, Wolfgang Ketterle

Published Aug 24, 1999• 5 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Surface modes in a Bose-Einstein condensate of sodium atoms have been studied. We observed excitations of standing and rotating quadrupolar and octopolar modes. The modes were excited with high spatial and temporal resolution using the optical dipole force of a rapidly scanning laser beam. This novel technique is very flexible and should be useful for the study of rotating Bose-Einstein condensates and vortices.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.cond-mat/9908340

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Surface modes in a Bose-Einstein condensate of sodium atoms have been studied. We observed excitations of standing and rotating quadrupolar and octopolar modes. The modes were excited with high spatial and temporal resolution using the optical dipole force of a rapidly scanning laser beam. This novel technique is very flexible and should be useful for the study of rotating Bose-Einstein condensates and vortices.
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We studied the nucleation of vortices in a Bose-Einstein condensate stirred by a laser beam. The vortex cores were observed using time-of-flight absorption imaging. Depending on the stirrer size, either discrete resonances or a broad response was visible as the stir frequency was varied. Stirring beams small compared to the condensate size generated vortices below the critical rotation frequency for the nucleation of surface modes, suggesting a local mechanism of generation. In addition, we observed the centrifugal distortion of the condensate due to the rotating vortex lattice and found evidence for bent vortices.
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