Simon L. Cornish — Page 4

arXiv2006

Formation of bright matter-wave solitons during the collapse of Bose-Einstein condensates

We observe bright matter-wave solitons form during the collapse of 85Rb condensates in a three-dimensional magnetic trap. The collapse is induced by using a Feshbach resonance to suddenly switch the atomic interactions from repulsive to attractive. Remnant condensates containing several times the critical number of atoms for the onset of instability are observed to survive the collapse. Under these conditions a highly robust configuration of solitons forms such that each soliton satisfies the condition for stability and neighboring solitons exhibit repulsive interactions.

cond-mat.other↗

arXiv2001

Dynamics of collapsing and exploding Bose-Einstein condensates

We explored the dynamics of how a Bose-Einstein condensate collapses and subsequently explodes when the balance of forces governing the size and shape of the condensate is suddenly altered. A condensate's equilibrium size and shape is strongly affected by the inter-atomic interactions. Our ability to induce a collapse by switching the interactions from repulsive to attractive by tuning an externally-applied magnetic field yields a wealth of detailed information on the violent collapse process. We observe anisotropic atom bursts that explode from the condensate, atoms leaving the condensate in undetected forms, spikes appearing in the condensate wave function, and oscillating remnant condensates that survive the collapse. These all have curious dependencies on time, the strength of the interaction, and the number of condensate atoms. Although ours would seem to be a simple well-characterized system, our measurements reveal many interesting phenomena that challenge theoretical models.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗