Cold Bose Gases Research Articles

Dissipative dynamics of an impurity with spin-orbit coupling

Brownian motion of a mobile impurity in a bath is affected by spin-orbit coupling (SOC). Here, we discuss a Caldeira-Leggett-type model that can be used to propose and interpret quantum simulators of this problem in cold Bose gases. First, we derive a master equation that describes the model and explore it in a one-dimensional (1D) setting. To validate the standard assumptions needed for our derivation, we analyze available experimental data without SOC; as a byproduct, this analysis suggests that the quench dynamics of the impurity is beyond the 1D Bose-polaron approach at temperatures currently accessible in a cold-atom laboratory---motion of the impurity is mainly driven by dissipation. For systems with SOC, we demonstrate that 1D spin-orbit coupling can be gauged out even in the presence of dissipation---the information about SOC is incorporated in the initial conditions. Observables sensitive to this information (such as spin densities) can be used to study formation of steady spin polarization domains during quench dynamics.

Analytical theory of enhanced Bose–Einstein condensation in thin films

We present an analytically solvable theory of Bose–Einstein condensation (BEC) in thin film geometries. Analytical closed-form expressions for the critical temperature are obtained in both the low-to-moderate confinement regime (where the film thickness L is in the order of microns) as well as in the strong confinement regime where the thickness is in the order of few nanometers or lower. The possibility of high-temperature BEC is predicted in the strong confinement limit, with a square-root divergence of the critical temperature T c ∼ L −1/2. For cold Bose gases, this implies an enhancement up to two orders of magnitude in T c for films on the nanometer scale. Analytical predictions are also obtained for the heat capacity and the condensate fraction. A new law for the heat capacity of the condensate, i.e. C ∼ T 2, is predicted for nano-scale films, which implies a different λ-point behavior with respect to bulk systems, while the condensate fraction is predicted to follow a law.

Polaron Interactions and Bipolarons in One-Dimensional Bose Gases in the Strong Coupling Regime

Bose polarons, quasiparticles composed of mobile impurities surrounded by cold Bose gas, can experience strong interactions mediated by the many-body environment and form bipolaron bound states. Here we present a detailed study of heavy polarons in a one-dimensional Bose gas by formulating a nonperturbative theory and complementing it with exact numerical simulations. We develop an analytic approach for weak boson-boson interactions and arbitrarily strong impurity-boson couplings. Our approach is based on a mean-field theory that accounts for deformations of the superfluid by the impurities and in this way minimizes quantum fluctuations. The mean-field equations are solved exactly in the Born-Oppenheimer approximation, leading to an analytic expression for the interaction potential of heavy polarons, which is found to be in excellent agreement with quantum MonteCarlo (QMC) results. In the strong coupling limit, the potential substantially deviates from the exponential form valid for weak coupling and has a linear shape at short distances. Taking into account the leading-order Born-Huang corrections, we calculate bipolaron binding energies for impurity-boson mass ratios as low as 3 and find excellent agreement with QMC results.

Realization of a Townes Soliton in a Two-Component Planar Bose Gas.

Most experimental observations of solitons are limited to one-dimensional (1D) situations, where they are naturally stable. For instance, in 1D cold Bose gases, they exist for any attractive interaction strength g and particle number N. By contrast, in two dimensions, solitons appear only for discrete values of gN, the so-called Townes soliton being the most celebrated example. Here, we use a two-component Bose gas to prepare deterministically such a soliton: Starting from a uniform bath of atoms in a given internal state, we imprint the soliton wave function using an optical transfer to another state. We explore various interaction strengths, atom numbers, and sizes and confirm the existence of a solitonic behavior for a specific value of gN and arbitrary sizes, a hallmark of scale invariance.

Flow equations for cold Bose gases

We derive flow equations for cold atomic gases with one macroscopically populated energy level. The generator is chosen such that the ground state decouples from all other states in the system as the renormalization group flow progresses. We propose a self-consistent truncation scheme for the flow equations at the level of three-body operators and show how they can be used to calculate the ground state energy of a general N-body system. Moreover, we provide a general method to estimate the truncation error in the calculated energies. Finally, we test our scheme by benchmarking to the exactly solvable Lieb–Liniger model and find good agreement for weak and moderate interaction strengths.

Phase Structure of Bose - Einstein Condensate in Ultra - Cold Bose Gases

The Bose - Einstein condensation of ultra - cold Bose gases is studied by means of the Cornwall - Jackiw - Tomboulis effective potential approach in the improved double - bubble approximation which preserves the Goldstone theorem. The phase structure of Bose - Einstein condensate associating with two different types of phase transition is systematically investigated. Its main feature is that the symmetry which was broken at zero temperature gets restore at higher temperature.

Nondestructive selective probing of phononic excitations in a cold Bose gas using impurities

We introduce a detector that selectively probes the phononic excitations of a cold Bose gas. The detector is composed of a single impurity atom confined by a double-well potential, where the two lowest eigenstates of the impurity form an effective probe qubit that is coupled to the phonons via density-density interactions with the bosons. The system is analogous to a two-level atom coupled to photons of the radiation field. We demonstrate that tracking the evolution of the qubit populations allows probing both thermal and coherent excitations in targeted phonon modes. The targeted modes are selected in both energy and momentum by adjusting the impurity's potential. We show how to use the detector to observe coherent density waves and to measure temperatures of the Bose gas down to the nanokelvin regime. We analyze how our scheme could be realized experimentally, including the possibility of using an array of multiple impurities to achieve greater precision from a single experimental run.

Efficient creation of maximally entangled states by modulation of tunneling rates

For systems described by the two-site Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian, we show that a sinusoidal modulation of the tunneling matrix element assists higher-order co-tunneling processes. Using this mechanism, we propose an efficient new scheme for creating a coherent superposition of states in which all particles are either on one site or all on the other site, the so-called NOON state. This scheme yields an almost perfect NOON state periodically. For larger numbers of particles, further reduction of the time to create the state is possible if more than one modulation frequency is employed. With this scheme, NOON states with a larger number of particles could be realized with state-of-the-art techniques for cold Bose gases in a double-well potential.

Bose-Einstein condensates and Efimov states in trapped many-boson systems

We investigate trapped cold Bose gases using the stochastic variational approach with realistic attractive finite-range two-body interactions. We study the properties of the Bose-Einstein condensates, particularly in the large scattering-length regime, and establish the existence of meta-stable many-body Efimov states.

Tkachenko oscillations and the compressibility of a rotating Bose-Einstein condensate.

The elastic oscillations of the vortex lattice of a cold Bose gas (Tkachenko modes) are shown to play a crucial role in the saturation of the compressibility sum rule, as a consequence of the hybridization with the longitudinal degrees of freedom. The presence of the vortex lattice is responsible for a q2 behavior of the static structure factor at small wave vectors q, which implies the absence of long range order in 2D configurations at zero temperature. Sum rules are used to calculate the Tkachenko frequency in the presence of harmonic trapping. Results are derived in the Thomas-Fermi regime and compared with experiments as well as with previous theoretical estimates.

Local correlations in a strongly interacting one-dimensional Bose gas

We develop an analytical method for calculating local correlations in stronglyinteracting one-dimensional (1D) Bose gases, based on the exactly solvableLieb–Liniger model. The results are obtained at zero and finite temperatures.They describe the interaction-induced reduction of local many-body correlationfunctions and can be used for achieving and identifying the strong-couplingTonks–Girardeau regime in experiments with cold Bose gases in the 1D regime.

Thermal vs Quantum Decoherence in Double Well Trapped Bose-Einstein Condensates

The quantum and thermal fluctuations of the phase are investigated in a cold Bose gas confined by a double well trap. The coherence of the system is discussed in terms of the visibility of interference fringes in both momentum and coordinate space. The visibility is calculated at zero as well as at finite temperature. The thermal fluctuations are shown to affect significantly the transition from the coherent to the incoherent regime even at very low temperatures. The coherence of an array of multiple condensates is also discussed.