arXiv subjects

Ashton S. Bradley

Publications and source records attributed to Ashton S. Bradley.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Microscopic Theory of Drag in a Bose Condensate Interacting with a Moving Reservoir

We derive a microscopic theory of drag for a Bose-Einstein condensate interacting with a moving reservoir. Starting from interactions between a condensate and a drifting fermionic bath, we integrate out the bath degrees of freedom within the Born--Markov approximation to obtain an effective Gross--Pitaevskii equation with a drag potential. From this potential we derive an effective drag force and obtain a closed expression for the drag coefficient, determined by the reservoir density fluctuations and the condensate density profile. As an application, we simulate the drag for an exciton--polariton condensate interacting with a drifting electron gas.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2026

Turbulence in Quantum Gases: Vortices, Waves, and Cascades

We review turbulence in ultracold quantum gases, using the scalar contact-interaction Bose-Einstein condensate as the reference system for quantized circulation, compressibility, vortices, sound, and cascades. We focus on the quantitative diagnostics that connect helium and classical phenomenology to microscopic wave-function dynamics: incompressible and compressible kinetic-energy spectra, wave-occupation spectra, spectral fluxes, vortex-resolved correlations, and velocity statistics. These diagnostics distinguish equilibrium vortex organization, decaying turbulent relaxation, forced cascade dynamics, and weak-wave turbulence, and show why power laws alone are insufficient evidence for a cascade. We survey experiments on two-dimensional Onsager clustering, three-dimensional vortex-line turbulence, box-trap wave cascades, engineered dissipation, and turbulent equations of state. We close by briefly placing the contact-interaction scalar superfluid system in a broader landscape of nonlocal, multicomponent, fermionic, and driven-dissipative quantum fluids, where turbulence concepts can be tested for universality.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2026

Evaporative damping in open system theory of Bose-Einstein Condensates

We derive a new damping mechanism in the open quantum systems description of Bose-Einstein condensates. It stems from previously neglected terms in the derivation of the stochastic projective Gross-Pitaevskii equation (SPGPE), accounting for a nonlinear evaporation of particles from the coherent into the incoherent region. We demonstrate that the mechanism, while so far assumed to be of minor importance, is comparable in strength to the widely employed number damping. We also provide a simplified (pseudo)-local and a dimensionally reduced form of this evaporative damping. The process completes the SPGPE description of ultracold Bose gases giving a full first-principles picture of their evolution at finite temperature.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2025

Velocity correlations of vortices and rarefaction pulses in compressible planar quantum fluids

We present a quantitative analytical framework for calculating two-point velocity correlations in compressible quantum fluids, focusing on two key classes of superfluid excitations: vortices and rarefaction pulses. We employ two complementary approaches. First, we introduce a new ansatz for vortex cores in planar quantum fluids that enhances analytic integrability. This ansatz yields closed-form expressions for power spectra and velocity correlations for general vortex distributions. Using it, we identify distinct signatures of short- and long-range velocity correlations corresponding to vortex dipoles and vortex pairs, respectively. Second, we analyze the fast rarefaction pulse regime of the Jones-Roberts soliton. By applying the asymptotic high-velocity wavefunction, we derive analytic expressions for the velocity power spectrum and correlation function, capturing the soliton characteristic length scale. We validate our analytical results for the homogeneous system against numerical treatment of a large trapped system, finding close quantitative agreement. Our findings provide the first analytic treatment of velocity correlations for Jones-Roberts solitons in quantum fluids of light [M. Baker-Rasooli et al., Physical Review Letters, 134, 233401 (2025)], and establish a foundation for characterizing vortices and solitons in compressible quantum fluids.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2025

Equilibrium, Relaxation and Fluctuations in homogeneous Bose-Einstein Condensates: Linearized Classical Field Analysis

Open quantum systems theory is central to describing the dynamics and equilibration of dilute-gas Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs). We present an analysis of the linearized stochastic projected Gross-Pitaevskii equation (SPGPE) describing finite-temperature BECs. Our treatment provides an optimal choice for the cut-off that divides the Bose gas into the low-energy coherent region forming a classical wave, and the high-energy thermal cloud treated as a reservoir. Moreover, it highlights the relevance of energy damping, the number-conserving scattering between thermal and coherent atoms. We analyze the equilibrium properties and near-equilibrium relaxation of a homogeneous BEC in one, two and three dimensions at high phase-space density, and calculate the autocorrelation function and power spectrum of the density and phase fluctuations. Simulations of the full non-linear SPGPE are in close agreement, and extend our arguments beyond the linear regime. Our work suggests the need for a re-examination of decay processes in BECs studied under the neglect of energy damping.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2025

Observation of Jones-Roberts solitons in a paraxial quantum fluid of light

We investigate the formation and dynamics of Jones-Roberts solitons in a smoothly inhomogeneous quantum fluid. To do so, we create a superfluid of light using paraxial, near-resonant laser beam propagating through a hot rubidium vapor. We excite a bounded vortex-antivortex dipole in the superfluid and observe its transition to a rarefaction pulse and back, in agreement with the seminal predictions of Jones and Roberts. Employing an analogy with ray optics, we calculate the trajectory of the interacting vortices, deriving an effective refractive index from the inhomogeneous fluid density. Finally, we examine analytically and experimentally the superfluid velocity correlations, observing a transfer of coherence from incompressible to compressible velocity of the quantum fluid, a direct signature of the dynamical conversion between vortices and rarefaction pulse.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2024

Regimes of Steady-State Turbulence in a Quantum Fluid

We simulate the Gross-Pitaevskii equation to model the development of turbulence in a quantum fluid confined by a cuboid box potential, and forced by shaking along one axis. We observe the development of isotropic turbulence from anisotropic forcing for a broad range of forcing amplitudes, and characterise the states through their Fourier spectra, vortex distributions, and spatial correlations. For weak forcing the steady-state wave-action spectrum exhibits a $k^{-3.5}$ scaling over wavenumber $k$; further decomposition uncovers the same power law in both compressible kinetic energy and quantum pressure, while the bulk superfluid remains phase coherent and free from extended vortices. As the forcing energy exceeds the chemical potential, extended vortices develop in the bulk, disrupting the $k^{-3.5}$ scaling. The spectrum then transitions to a $k^{-7/3}$ regime for compressible kinetic energy only, associated with dense vortex turbulence, and phase coherence limited to the healing length. The strong forcing regime is consistent with an inverse cascade of compressible energy driven by small-scale vortex annihilation.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2024

Thermal Decay of Planar Jones-Roberts Solitons

Homogeneous planar superfluids exhibit a range of low-energy excitations that also appear in highly excited states like superfluid turbulence. In dilute gas Bose-Einstein condensates, the Jones- Roberts soliton family includes vortex dipoles and rarefaction pulses in the low and high velocity regimes, respectively. These excitations carry both energy and linear momentum, making their decay characteristics crucial for understanding superfluid dynamics. In this work, we develop the theory of planar soliton decay due to thermal effects, as described by the stochastic projected Gross-Pitaevskii theory of reservoir interactions. We analyze two distinct damping terms involving transfer between the condensate and the non-condensate reservoir: particle transfer that also involves energy and usually drives condensate growth, and number-conserving energy transfer. We provide analytical treatments for both the low and high velocity regimes and identify conditions under which either mechanism dominates. Our findings indicate that energy damping prevails at high phase space density. These theoretical results are supported by numerical studies covering the entire velocity range from vortex dipole to rarefaction pulse. We use interaction energy to characterize rarefaction pulses, analogous to the distance between vortices in vortex dipoles, offering an experimentally accessible test for finite temperature theory in Bose-Einstein condensates.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2022

Scaling dynamics of the ultracold Bose gas

The large-scale expansion dynamics of quantum gases is a central tool for ultracold gas experiments and poses a significant challenge for theory. In this work we provide an exact reformulation of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation for the ultracold Bose gas in a coordinate frame that adaptively scales with the system size during evolution, enabling simulations of long evolution times during expansion or similar large-scale manipulation. Our approach makes no hydrodynamic approximations, is not restricted to a scaling ansatz, harmonic potentials, or energy eigenstates, and can be generalized readily to non-contact interactions via the appropriate stress tensor of the quantum fluid. As applications, we simulate the expansion of the ideal gas, a cigar-shaped condensate in the Thomas-Fermi regime, and a linear superposition of counter propagating Gaussian wavepackets. We recover known scaling for the ideal gas and Thomas-Fermi regimes, and identify a linear regime of aspect-ratio preserving free expansion; analysis of the scaling dynamics equations shows that an exact, aspect-ratio invariant, free expansion does not exist for nonlinear evolution. Our treatment enables exploration of nonlinear effects in matter-wave dynamics over large scale-changing evolution.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2022

Spectral analysis for compressible quantum fluids

Turbulent fluid dynamics typically involves excitations on many different length scales. Classical incompressible fluids can be cleanly represented in Fourier space enabling spectral analysis of energy cascades and other turbulence phenomena. In quantum fluids, additional phase information and singular behaviour near vortex cores thwarts the direct extension of standard spectral techniques. We develop a formal and numerical spectral analysis for $U(1)$ symmetry-breaking quantum fluids suitable for analyzing turbulent flows, with specific application to the Gross-Pitaevskii fluid. Our analysis builds naturally on the canonical approach to spectral analysis of velocity fields in compressible quantum fluids, and establishes a clear correspondence between energy spectral densities, power spectral densities, and autocorrelation functions, applicable to energy residing in velocity, quantum pressure, interaction, and potential energy of the fluid. Our formulation includes all quantum phase information and also enables arbitrary resolution spectral analysis, a valuable feature for numerical analysis. A central vortex in a trapped planar Bose-Einstein condensate provides an analytically tractable example with spectral features of interest in both the infrared and ultraviolet regimes. Sampled distributions modelling the dipole gas, plasma, and clustered regimes exhibit velocity correlation length increasing with vortex energy, consistent with known qualitative behaviour across the vortex clustering transition. The spectral analysis of compressible quantum fluids presented here offers a rigorous tool for analysing quantum features of superfluid turbulence in atomic or polariton condensates.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2022

Mutual friction and diffusion of two-dimensional quantum vortices

We present a microscopic open quantum systems theory of thermally-damped vortex motion in oblate atomic superfluids that includes previously neglected energy-damping interactions between superfluid and thermal atoms. This mechanism couples strongly to vortex core motion and causes dissipation of vortex energy due to mutual friction, as well as Brownian motion of vortices due to thermal fluctuations. We derive an analytic expression for the dimensionless mutual friction coefficient that gives excellent quantitative agreement with experimentally measured values, without any fitted parameters. Our work closes an existing two orders of magnitude gap between dissipation theory and experiments, previously bridged by fitted parameters, and provides a microscopic origin for the mutual friction and diffusion of quantized vortices in two-dimensional atomic superfluids.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2022

Feedback cooling Bose gases to quantum degeneracy

Degenerate quantum gases are instrumental in advancing many-body quantum physics and underpin emerging precision sensing technologies. All state-of-the-art experiments use evaporative cooling to achieve the ultracold temperatures needed for quantum degeneracy, yet evaporative cooling is extremely lossy: more than 99.9% of the gas is discarded. Such final particle number limitations constrain imaging resolution, gas lifetime, and applications leveraging macroscopic quantum coherence. Here we show that atomic Bose gases can be cooled to quantum degeneracy using real-time feedback, an entirely new method that does not suffer the same limitations as evaporative cooling. Through novel quantum-field simulations and scaling arguments, we demonstrate that an initial low-condensate-fraction thermal Bose gas can be cooled to a high-purity Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) by feedback control, with substantially lower atomic loss than evaporative cooling. Advantages of feedback cooling are found to be robust to imperfect detection, finite resolution of the control and measurement, time delay in the control loop, and spontaneous emission. Using feedback cooling to create degenerate sources with high coherence and low entropy enables new capabilities in precision measurement, atomtronics, and few- and many-body quantum physics.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2022

Vortex generation in stirred binary Bose-Einstein condensates

The dynamical vortex production, with a trap-confining time-dependent stirred potential, is studied by using mass-imbalanced cold-atom coupled Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC). The vortex formation is explored by considering that both coupled species are confined by a pancake-like harmonic trap, slightly modified elliptically by a time-dependent periodic potential, with the characteristic frequency enough larger than the transversal trap frequency. The approach is applied to the experimentally accessible binary mixtures $^{85}$Rb-$^{133}$Cs and $^{85}$Rb-$^{87}$Rb, which allow us to verify the effect of mass differences in the dynamics. For both species, the time evolutions of the respective energy contributions, together with associated velocities, are studied in order to distinguish turbulent from non-turbulent flows. By using the angular momentum and moment of inertia mean values, effective classical rotation frequencies are suggested, which are further considered within simulations in the rotating frame without the stirring potential. Spectral analysis is also provided for both species, with the main focus being the incompressible kinetic energies. In the transient turbulent regime, before stable vortex patterns are produced, the characteristic $k^{-5/3}$ Kolmogorov behavior is clearly identified for both species at intermediate momenta $k$ above the inverse Thomas-Fermi radial positions, further modified by the universal $k^{-3}$ scaling at momenta higher than the inverse of the respective healing lengths. Emerging from the mass-imbalanced comparison, relevant is to observe that, as larger is the mass difference, much faster is the dynamical production of stable vortices.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2022

Turbulent relaxation to equilibrium in a two-dimensional quantum vortex gas

We experimentally study emergence of microcanonical equilibrium states in the turbulent relaxation dynamics of a two-dimensional chiral vortex gas. Same-sign vortices are injected into a quasi-two-dimensional disk-shaped atomic Bose-Einstein condensate using a range of mechanical stirring protocols. The resulting long-time vortex distributions are found to be in excellent agreement with the meanfield Poisson-Boltzmann equation for the system describing the microcanonical ensemble at fixed energy $\cal{H}$ and angular momentum $\cal{M}$. The equilibrium states are characterized by the corresponding thermodynamic variables of inverse temperature $\hatβ$ and rotation frequency $\hatω$. We are able to realize equilibria spanning the full phase diagram of the vortex gas, including on-axis states near zero-temperature, infinite temperature, and negative absolute temperatures. At sufficiently high energies the system exhibits a symmetry-breaking transition, resulting in an off-axis equilibrium phase at negative absolute temperature that no longer shares the symmetry of the container. We introduce a point-vortex model with phenomenological damping and noise that is able to quantitatively reproduce the equilibration dynamics.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2021

Superflow decay in a toroidal Bose gas: The effect of quantum and thermal fluctuations

We theoretically investigate the stochastic decay of persistent currents in a toroidal ultracold atomic superfluid caused by a perturbing barrier. Specifically, we perform detailed three-dimensional simulations to model the experiment of Kumar et al. in [Phys. Rev. A 95 021602 (2017)], which observed a strong temperature dependence in the timescale of superflow decay in an ultracold Bose gas. Our ab initio numerical approach exploits a classical-field framework that includes thermal fluctuations due to interactions between the superfluid and a thermal cloud, as well as the intrinsic quantum fluctuations of the Bose gas. In the low-temperature regime our simulations provide a quantitative description of the experimental decay timescales, improving on previous numerical and analytical approaches. At higher temperatures, our simulations give decay timescales that range over the same orders of magnitude observed in the experiment, however, there are some quantitative discrepancies that are not captured by any of the mechanisms we explore. Our results suggest a need for further experimental and theoretical studies into superflow stability.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2020

Giant Vortex Clusters in a Two-Dimensional Quantum Fluid

Adding energy to a system through transient stirring usually leads to more disorder. In contrast, point-like vortices in a bounded two-dimensional fluid are predicted to reorder above a certain energy, forming persistent vortex clusters. Here we realize experimentally these vortex clusters in a planar superfluid: a $^{87}$Rb Bose-Einstein condensate confined to an elliptical geometry. We demonstrate that the clusters persist for long times, maintaining the superfluid system in a high energy state far from global equilibrium. Our experiments explore a regime of vortex matter at negative absolute temperatures, and have relevance to the dynamics of topological defects, two-dimensional turbulence, and systems such as helium films, nonlinear optical materials, fermion superfluids, and quark-gluon plasmas.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2019

Dynamics of Hot Bose-Einstein Condensates: stochastic Ehrenfest relations for number and energy damping

Describing partially-condensed Bose gases poses a long-standing theoretical challenge. We present exact stochastic Ehrenfest relations for the stochastic projected Gross-Pitaevskii equation, including both number and energy damping mechanisms, and all projector terms that arise from the energy cutoff separating system from reservoir. We test the theory by applying it to the centre of mass fluctuations of a harmonically trapped prolate system, finding close agreement between c-field simulations and analytical results. The formalism lays the foundation to analytically explore experimentally accessible hot Bose-Einstein condensates.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2019

Steady states, squeezing, and entanglement in intracavity triplet down conversion

Triplet down conversion, the process of converting one high-energy photon into three low-energy photons, may soon be experimentally feasible due to advances in optical resonator technology. We use quantum phase-space techniques to analyse the process of degenerate intracavity triplet down conversion by solving stochastic differential equations within the truncated positive-P representation. The time evolution of both intracavity mode populations are simulated, and the resulting steady-states are examined as a function of the pump intensity. Quantum effects are most pronounced in the region immediately above the semi-classical pumping threshold, where our numerical results differ significantly from semi-classical predictions. Regimes of measurable squeezing and bipartite entanglement are identified from steady-state spectra of the cavity output fields. We validate the truncated positive-P description against Monte Carlo wave function simulations, finding good agreement for low mode populations.

quant-ph↗