Growth dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a dimple trap without cooling
Abstract
We study the formation of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a cigar-shaped three-dimensional harmonic trap, induced by the controlled addition of an attractive "dimple" potential along the weak axis. In this manner we are able to induce condensation without cooling due to a localized increase in the phase space density. We perform a quantitative analysis of the thermodynamic transformation in both the sudden and adiabatic regimes for a range of dimple widths and depths. We find good agreement with equilibrium calculations based on self-consistent semiclassical Hartree-Fock theory describing the condensate and thermal cloud. We observe there is an optimal dimple depth that results in a maximum in the condensate fraction. We also study the non-equilibrium dynamics of condensate formation in the sudden turn-on regime, finding good agreement for the observed time dependence of the condensate fraction with calculations based on quantum kinetic theory.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1011.0296,
title = {Growth dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a dimple trap without cooling},
author = {Michael C. Garrett and Adrian Ratnapala and Eikbert D. van Ooijen and Christopher J. Vale and Kristian Weegink and Sebastian K. Schnelle and Otto Vainio and Norman R. Heckenberg and Halina Rubinsztein-Dunlop and Matthew J. Davis},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1011.0296},
year = {2011}
}
Comments
v1: 9 pages, 7 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. A; v2: 10 pages, 8 figures, fixed typos, added references, additional details on experimental procedure, values of phase-space density, new figure and discussion on effects of three-body loss in Appendix B (replaced with published version)