Non-exponential one-body loss in a Bose-Einstein condensate
Abstract
We have studied the decay of a Bose-Einstein condensate of metastable helium atoms in an optical dipole trap. In the regime where two- and three-body losses can be neglected we show that the Bose-Einstein condensate and the thermal cloud show fundamentally different decay characteristics. The total number of atoms decays exponentially with time constant tau; however, the thermal cloud decays exponentially with time constant (4/3)tau and the condensate decays much faster, and non-exponentially. We show that this behaviour, which should be present for all BECs in thermal equilibrium with a considerable thermal fraction, is due to a transfer of atoms from the condensate to the thermal cloud during its decay.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1112.4754,
title = {Non-exponential one-body loss in a Bose-Einstein condensate},
author = {S. Knoop and J. S. Borbely and R. van Rooij and W. Vassen},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1112.4754},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
The intuitive explanation of the atomic transfer effect has been corrected