Abstract
A description of the dynamical response of uniformly trapped Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) to oscillating external gravitational fields is developed, with the inclusion of damping. Two different effects that can lead to the creation of phonons in the BEC are identified; direct driving and parametric driving. Additionally, the oscillating gravitational field couples phonon modes, which can lead to the transition of excitations between modes. The special case of the gravitational field of a small, oscillating sphere located closely to the BEC is considered. It is shown that measurement of the effects may be possible for oscillating source masses down to the milligram scale, with a signal to noise ratio of the order of 10. To this end, noise terms and variations of experimental parameters are discussed and generic experimental parameters are given for specific atom species. The results of this article suggest the utility of BECs as sensors for the gravitational field of very small oscillating objects which may help pave the way towards gravity experiments with masses in the quantum regime.
Highlights
Bose–Einstein condensate (BECs) are very small and extremely cold systems of a large number of atoms
Further theoretical proposals to use collective oscillations in Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) and, in particular, their phonon modes for sensing purposes include, for example, gravitational wave detectors [9,10,11], sensors for the effect of spacetime curvature on entanglement [12] and magnetic field and rotation sensors employing solitons formed by optical lattices [14]
We investigate the effect of an oscillating gravitational field on the phonon modes of a BEC in a uniform trapping potential for the particular case of the gravitational near field of a small, oscillating gold or tungsten source mass
Summary
A description of the dynamical response of uniformly trapped Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) to licence. It is shown that measurement of the effects may be possible for oscillating source masses down to the milligram scale, with a signal to noise ratio of the order of 10. To this end, noise terms and variations of experimental parameters are discussed and generic experimental parameters are given for specific atom species. The results of this article suggest the utility of BECs as sensors for the gravitational field of very small oscillating objects which may help pave the way towards gravity experiments with masses in the quantum regime
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