Antonios Eleftheriou | Searcharxiv

arXiv2000

How to mode-lock an atom laser

We consider a possible technique for mode-locking an atom laser, based on the generation of a dark soliton in a ring-shaped Bose-Einstein condensate, with repulsive atomic interactions. The soliton is a kink, with angular momentum per particle equal to \hbar/2. It emerges naturally, when the condensate is stirred at the soliton velocity, and subsequently outcoupled with a periodic Raman pulse-train. The result is a replicating coherent field inside the atom laser. We give a numerical demonstration of the generation and stabilization of the soliton.

cond-mat↗

arXiv1999

Instability of a Bose-Einstein Condensate with Attractive Interaction

We study the stability of a Bose-Einstein condensate of harmonically trapped atoms with negative scattering length, specifically lithium 7. Our method is to solve the time-dependent nonlinear Schrodinger equation numerically. For an isolated condensate, with no gain or loss, we find that the system is stable (apart from quantum tunneling) if the particle number N is less than a critical number N_c. For N > N_c, the system collapses to high-density clumps in a region near the center of the trap. The time for the onset of collapse is on the order of 1 trap period. Within numerical uncertainty, the results are consistent with the formation of a "black hole" of infinite density fluctuations, as predicted by Ueda and Huang. We obtain numerically N_c approximately 1251. We then include gain-loss mechanisms, i.e., the gain of atoms from a surrounding "thermal cloud", and the loss due to two- and three-body collisions. The number N now oscillates in a steady state, with a period of about 145 trap periods. We obtain N_c approximately 1260 as the maximum value in the oscillations.

cond-mat↗