Stationary and Nonstationary Fluid Flow of a Bose-Einstein Condensate Through a Penetrable Barrier

2007/04/18 by Peter Engels, P. Engels, C. Atherton +1 · 6 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Bose–Einstein condensate #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Condensed matter physics #Dipole #Excitation #Flow (mathematics) #Fluid dynamics #Mechanics #Physics #Quantum fluid #Quantum mechanics #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics #Soliton #Strong Light-Matter Interactions #Superfluidity #Vortex #cond-mat.other

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.99.160405

4 pages, 4 figures

arxiv created 2007/04/18 · openalex publication_date 2007/10/19 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

We experimentally study the fluid flow induced by a broad, penetrable barrier moving through an elongated dilute gaseous Bose-Einstein condensate. The barrier is created by a laser beam swept through the condensate, and the resulting dipole potential can be either attractive or repulsive. We examine both cases and find regimes of stable and unstable fluid flow: At slow speeds of the barrier, the fluid flow is steady due to the superfluidity of the condensate. At intermediate speeds, we observe an unsteady regime in which the condensate gets filled with dark solitons. At faster speeds, soliton formation completely ceases, and a remarkable absence of excitation in the condensate is seen again.

Citations

• Motional Dressed States in a Bose-Einstein Condensate: Superfluidity at Supersonic Speed
• Bose-Einstein beams: Coherent propagation through a guide
• Watching Dark Solitons Decay into Vortex Rings in a Bose-Einstein Condensate
• Beyond the Landau criterion for superfluidity
• Čerenkov-like radiation in a binary superfluid flow past an obstacle
• Motion of a heavy impurity through a Bose-Einstein condensate
• Dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensates in optical lattices
• Sound propagation in a cylindrical Bose-condensed gas
• Superfluidity versus Anderson Localization in a Dilute Bose Gas

Cited by

• Adiabatic invariant analysis of dark and dark-bright soliton stripes in two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensates
• Superfluid Motion of Light
• Stability criterion for superfluidity based on the density spectral function
• Heavy solitons in a fermionic superfluid
• Momentum correlations as signature of sonic Hawking radiation in Bose-Einstein condensates
• Breakdown of the superfluidity of a matter wave in a random environment