2010/04/30 by D. Dries, S. E. Pollack, J. Hitchcock +3 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic physics #Bose–Einstein condensate #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Condensed matter physics #Critical ionization velocity #Dipole #Dissipative system #Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope #Fragmentation (computing) #Impurity #Optical lattice #Physics #Quantum electrodynamics #Quantum mechanics #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics #Strong Light-Matter Interactions #Superfluidity #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.quant-gas #physics.atom-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.82.033603
14 pages, 20 figures
arxiv created 2010/07/20 · openalex publication_date 2010/09/08 · arxiv updated 2015/05/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We investigate the effects of impurities, either correlated disorder or a single Gaussian defect, on the collective dipole motion of a Bose-Einstein condensate of 7Li in an optical trap. We find that this motion is damped at a rate dependent on the impurity strength, condensate center-of-mass velocity, and interatomic interactions. Damping in the Thomas-Fermi regime depends universally on the disordered potential strength scaled to the condensate chemical potential and the condensate velocity scaled to the speed of sound. The damping rate is comparatively small in the weakly interacting regime, and, in this case, is accompanied by strong condensate fragmentation. In situ and time-of-flight images of the atomic cloud provide evidence that this fragmentation is driven by dark soliton formation.