Self-trapping of impurities in Bose-Einstein condensates: Strong attractive and repulsive coupling

2008/01/31 by M. Bruderer, W. Bao, D. Jaksch
Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Optical properties and cooling technologies in crystalline materials #Strong Light-Matter Interactions #quant-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1209/0295-5075/82/30004

published as EuroPhys. Lett. 82, 30004 (2008) · 7 pages, 5 figures

openalex publication_date 2008/04/16 · arxiv created 2008/05/14 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30

Abstract

We study the interaction-induced localization —the so-called self-trapping— of a neutral impurity atom immersed in a homogeneous Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). Based on a Hartree description of the BEC we show that —unlike repulsive impurities— attractive impurities have a singular ground state in 3d and shrink to a point-like state in 2d as the coupling approaches a critical value β ⋆ . Moreover, we find that the density of the BEC increases markedly in the vicinity of attractive impurities in 1d and 2d, which strongly enhances inelastic collisions between atoms in the BEC. These collisions result in a loss of BEC atoms and possibly of the localized impurity itself.

Citations

• K<mml:none/><mml:none/><mml:mprescripts/><mml:none/>40−Rb<mml:none/><mml:none/><mml:mprescripts/><mml:none/>87Feshbach resonances: Modeling the interatomic potential
• Bose-Fermi Mixtures in a Three-Dimensional Optical Lattice
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• Helium nanodroplets and trapped Bose–Einstein condensates as prototypes of finite quantum fluids