English

Inflationary quasiparticle creation and thermalization dynamics in coupled Bose-Einstein condensates

Quantum Gases 2018-11-06 v2 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics Statistical Mechanics Quantum Physics

Abstract

A Bose gas in a double-well potential, exhibiting a true Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) amplitude and initially performing Josephson oscillations, is a prototype of an isolated, non-equilibrium many-body system. We investigate the quasiparticle (QP) creation and thermalization dynamics of this system by solving the time-dependent Keldysh-Bogoliubov equations. We find avalanche-like QP creation due to a parametric resonance between BEC and QP oscillations, followed by slow, exponential relaxation to a thermal state at an elevated temperature, controlled by the initial excitation energy of the oscillating BEC above its ground state. The crossover between the two regimes occurs because of an effective decoupling of the QP and BEC oscillations. This dynamics is analogous to elementary particle creation in models of the early universe. The thermalization in our set-up occurs because the BEC acts as a grand canonical reservoir for the quasiparticle system.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1603.04898,
  title  = {Inflationary quasiparticle creation and thermalization dynamics in coupled Bose-Einstein condensates},
  author = {Anna Posazhennikova and Mauricio Trujillo-Martinez and Johann Kroha},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1603.04898},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

5 pages, 4 Figures, final version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Lett

R2 v1 2026-06-22T13:11:51.062Z