Stability and metastability of trapless Bose-Einstein condensates and quantum liquids
Konstantin G. Zloshchastiev
备注：
Based on the talk given at the International Workshop "Symmetry and Integrability of Equations of Mathematical Physics" (17-20 December 2016, NASU Institute of Mathematics, Kyiv)
Various kinds of Bose-Einstein condensates are considered, which evolve without any geometric constraints or external trap potentials including gravitational. For studies of their collective oscillations and stability, including the metastability and macroscopic tunneling phenomena, both the variational approach and the Vakhitov-Kolokolov criterion are employed, calculations are done for condensates of an arbitrary spatial dimension. It is determined that that the trapless condensate described by the logarithmic wave equation is essentially stable, regardless of its dimensionality, while the trapless condensates described by wave equations of a polynomial type with respect to the wavefunction, such as the Gross-Pitaevskii (cubic), cubic-quintic, and so on, are at best metastable. This means that trapless "polynomial" condensates are unstable against spontaneous delocalization caused by fluctuations of their width, density and energy, leading to a finite lifetime.
We theoretically study the stability of a trapless dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) with temporal modulation of short-range contact interaction. For this aim, through both analytical and numerical methods, we solve a Gross-Pitaevskii equation with both constant and oscillatory form of short-range contact interaction along with long-range, nonlocal, dipole-dipole (DD) interaction terms. Using variational method, we discuss the stability of the trapless dipolar BEC with presence and absence of both constant and oscillatory contact interactions. We show that the oscillatory contact interact…
We study the stabilization of a trapless Bose-Einstein condensate by analysing the mean-field Gross-Pitaevskii equation with attractive two- and three-body interactions through both analytical and numerical methods. Using the variational method we show that there is an enhancement of the condensate stability due to the inclusion of a three-body interaction in addition to the two-body interaction. We also study the stability of the condensates in the presence of the time-varying three-body interaction. Finally we confirm the stabilization of a trapless condensate from numerical simulation.
Analyzing a Gross-Pitaevskii equation with cubic, quartic, and quintic nonlinearities through analytical and numerical methods, we examine the stability of two-dimensional (2D) trapless Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) with two-, three-body interactions and quantum fluctuations. Applying a variational approach, we derive the equation of motion and effective potential to discuss in detail the stability of the BECs in 2D free space. We show that with the aid of quantum fluctuations it is possible to stabilize 2D trapless BEC without any oscillatory nonlinearities. Also, there is an enhancement o…
We investigate the nonlocal Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) equation with long-range dipole-dipole and contact interactions (including binary and three-body collisions). We address the impact of the three-body interaction on stabilizing trapless dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs). It is found that the dipolar BECs exhibit stability not only for the usual combination of attractive binary and repulsive three-body interactions, but also for the case when these terms have opposite signs. The trapless stability of the dipolar BECs may be further enhanced by time-periodic modulation of the three-body in…
We theoretically explore the possibility of stabilizing the trapless polariton Bose-Einstein condensates (pBECs). Exploiting the variational method, we solve the associated nonlinear, complex Gross-Pitaevskii (cGP) equation and derive the equation of motion for the amplitude and width of the condensate. These variational results described by ordinary differential equations are rewritten to perform a linear stability analysis to generate a stability window in the repulsive domain. A set of coupled nonlinear ordinary differential equations obtained through variational approach are then solved by…
We consider a Bose-Einstein condensed cloud of atoms which rotate in a toroidal/annular potential. Assuming one-dimensional motion, we evaluate the critical frequencies associated with the effect of hysteresis and the critical coupling for stability of the persistent currents. We perform these calculations using both the mean-field approximation and the method of numerical diagonalization of the many-body Hamiltonian which includes corrections due to the finiteness of the atom number.
The hallmark of superfluidity is the appearance of metastable flow-states that carry a persistent circulating current. Considering Bose-Hubbard superfluid rings, we clarify the role of "quantum chaos" in this context. We show that the standard Landau and Bogoliubov superfluidity criteria fail for such low-dimensional circuits. We also discuss the feasibility for a coherent operation of a SQUID-like setup. Finally, we address the manifestation of the strong many-body dynamical localization effect.
We study three dimensional Bose and Fermi gases in the upper branch, a phase defined by the absence of bound states in the repulsive interaction regime, within an approximation that considers only two-body interactions. Employing a formalism based on the S-matrix, we derive useful analytic expressions that hold on the upper branch in the weak coupling limit. We determine upper branch phase diagrams for both bosons and fermions with techniques valid for arbitrary positive scattering length.
We solve the Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) and Bogoliubov equations to investigate the metastability of superfluidity in a Bose-Einstein condensate in the presence of a uniformly moving defect potential in a two-dimensional torus. We calculate the total energy and momentum as functions of the driving velocity of the moving defect and find metastable states with negative effective-mass near the critical velocity. We also find that the first excited energy (energy gap) in the finite-sized torus closes at the critical velocity, that it obeys one-fourth power-law scaling, and that the dynamical fluctuatio…
We theoretically study homogeneously trapped atomic Bose-Einstein condensates where all three momentum components couple to a pseudo-spin-$1/2$ degree of freedom. Tuning the anisotropies of spin-orbit coupling and the spin-dependent interactions is shown to provide access to a rich phase diagram with a tetracritical point, first-order phase transitions, and multiple metastable phases of stripe and plane-wave character. The elementary excitation spectrum of the axial plane-wave phase features an anisotropic roton feature and can be used to probe the phase diagram. In addition to providing a ver…
Spinor Bose-Einstein condensates provide a unique example in which the Bogoliubov theory fails to describe the metastability associated with first-order quantum phase transitions. This problem is resolved by developing the spinor Beliaev theory which takes account of quantum fluctuations of the condensate. It is these fluctuations that generate terms of higher than the fourth order in the order-parameter field which are needed for the first-order phase transitions. Besides the conventional first-order phase transitions which are accompanied by metastable states, we find a class of first-order …
We examine the problem of stability of persistent currents in a mixture of two Bose gases trapped in an annular potential. We evaluate the critical coupling for metastability in the transition from quasi-one to two-dimensional motion. We also evaluate the critical coupling for metastability in a mixture of two species as function of the population imbalance. The stability of the currents is shown to be sensitive to the deviation from one-dimensional motion.
We consider a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) with attractive two-body interactions in a cigar-shaped trap, initially prepared in its ground state for a given negative scattering length, which is quenched to a larger absolute value of the scattering length. Using the mean-field approximation, we compute numerically, for an experimentally relevant range of aspect ratios and initial strengths of the coupling, two critical values of quench: one corresponds to the weakest attraction strength the quench to which causes the system to collapse before completing even a single return from the narrow con…
We theoretically study the superfluidity properties of a non-equilibrium Bose-Einstein condensate of exciton-polaritons in a semiconductor microcavity. The dynamics of the condensate is described at mean-field level in terms of a modified Complex Ginzburg Landau equation. A generalized Landau criterion is formulated which estimates the onset of the drag force on a small moving defect. Metastability of supercurrents in multiply connected geometries persists up to higher flow speeds.
We investigate the metastability of a ferromagnetic spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate confined in a quasi-one-dimensional rotating ring trap by solving the spin-1 Gross-Pitaevskii equation. We find analytical solutions that exhibit spin textures. By performing linear stability analysis, it is shown that the solutions can become metastable states. We also find that the number of Nambu-Goldstone modes changes at a certain rotation velocity without changing the continuous symmetry of the order parameter.
A semiclassical theory is provided for the metastability regime-diagram of atomtronic superfluid circuits. Such circuits typically exhibit high-dimensional chaos; and non-linear resonances that couple the Bogoliubov excitations manifest themselves. Contrary to the expectation these resonances do not originate from the familiar Beliaev and Landau damping terms. Rather, they are described by a variant of the Cherry Hamiltonian of celestial mechanics. Consequently we study the induced decay process, and its dependence on the number of sites and of condensed particles.
We study superfluid (SF) states of strongly interacting Bose-Bose mixtures with equal mass and intra-component interaction in optical lattices both in the presence and absence of a barrier potential (BP). We show that the SF order parameters obey the two-component nonlinear Schroedinger equation (NLSE) with not only cubic but also quintic nonlinearity in the vicinity of the first-order transitions to the Mott insulators with even fillings. In the case of no BP, we analyze solitary-wave (SW) solutions of the cubic-quintic NLSE. When the SF state changes from a ground state to a metastable one, …
We consider a singly quantized off-axis straight vortex in a rotating dipolar ultracold gas in the Thomas-Fermi (TF) regime. We derive analytic results for small displacements and perform numerical calculations for large displacement within the TF regime. We show that the dipolar interaction energy increases (decreases) as the vortex moves from the trap center to the edge in an oblate (a prolate) trap. We find that for an oblate (a prolate) trap, the effect of the dipole-dipole interaction is to lower (raise) both the precession velocity of an off-center straight vortex line and the angular ve…
We experimentally and theoretically study the peak fraction of a Bose-Einstein condensate loaded into a cubic optical lattice as the lattice potential depth and entropy per particle are varied. This system is well-described by the superfluid regime of the Bose-Hubbard model, which allows for comparison with mean-field theories and exact quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) simulations. Despite correcting for systematic discrepancies between condensate fraction and peak fraction, we discover that the experiment consistently shows the presence of a condensate at temperatures higher than the critical temper…
We study the metastability and decay of multiply-charged superflow in a ring-shaped atomic Bose-Einstein condensate. Supercurrent corresponding to a giant vortex with topological charge up to q=10 is phase-imprinted optically and detected both interferometrically and kinematically. We observe q=3 superflow persisting for up to a minute and clearly resolve a cascade of quantised steps in its decay. These stochastic decay events, associated with vortex-induced $2 π$ phase slips, correspond to collective jumps of atoms between discrete q values. We demonstrate the ability to detect quantised rota…
Recent theoretical and experimental results demonstrate a close connection between the super Tonks-Girardeau (sTG) gas and a 1D hard sphere Bose (HSB) gas with hard sphere diameter nearly equal to the 1D scattering length $a_{1D}$ of the sTG gas, a highly excited gas-like state with nodes only at interparticle separations $|x_{j\ell}|=x_{node}\approx a_{1D}$. It is shown herein that when the coupling constant $g_B$ in the Lieb-Liniger interaction $g_Bδ(x_{j\ell})$ is negative and $|x_{12}|\ge x_{node}$, the sTG and HSB wave functions for $N=2$ particles are not merely similar, but identical; t…
