Collective excitations of trapped binary mixtures of Bose-Einstein condensed gases

Abstract

The linearized time-dependent coupled Gross-Pitaevskii equations describing the long-wavelength excitations of Bose-Einstein condensed binary mixtures are solved in harmonic traps for the case where only the binary phase is present. The dispersion law contains two branches whose dependence on the quantum numbers of the modes is the same as for a one-component condensate, but with different prefactors, depending on the ratios of the three $s$-wave scattering lengths of the two atomic species. In the general case where the binary phase in the trap coexists with one or both one-component phases, the mode spectrum depends on the geometry of the interphase boundaries due to the boundary conditions there. Measurements of the oscillation frequencies as in recent experiments with modulated traps would yield very detailed information on this system.