Observation of shock waves in a large Bose-Einstein condensate

We observe the formation of shock waves in a Bose-Einstein condensate containing a large number of sodium atoms. The shock wave is initiated with a repulsive blue-detuned light barrier, intersecting the Bose-Einstein condensate, after which two shock fronts appear. We observe breaking of these waves when the size of these waves approaches the healing length of the condensate. At this time, the wave front splits into two parts and clear fringes appear. The experiment is modeled using an effective one-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii-like equation and gives excellent quantitative agreement with the experiment, even though matter waves with wavelengths two orders of magnitude smaller than the healing length are present. In these experiments, no significant heating or particle loss is observed.

[1]  C. Wieman,et al.  Observation of Bose-Einstein Condensation in a Dilute Atomic Vapor , 1995, Science.

[2]  S. Burger,et al.  Dark solitons in Bose-Einstein condensates , 1999, QELS 2000.

[3]  J. Chang,et al.  Formation of dispersive shock waves by merging and splitting Bose-Einstein condensates. , 2008, Physical review letters.

[4]  Randall G. Hulet,et al.  Bright matter wave solitons in Bose–Einstein condensates , 2003 .

[5]  Clark,et al.  Collective Excitations of Atomic Bose-Einstein Condensates. , 1996, Physical review letters.

[6]  C. Wieman,et al.  Formation of bright matter-wave solitons during the collapse of attractive Bose-Einstein condensates. , 2006, Physical review letters.

[7]  N. Robins,et al.  Limits to the flux of a continuous atom laser , 2005 .

[8]  Panayotis G. Kevrekidis,et al.  Soliton trains and vortex streets as a form of Cerenkov radiation in trapped Bose-Einstein condensates , 2007, Math. Comput. Simul..

[9]  M. J. Davis,et al.  Dynamical formation and interaction of bright solitary waves and solitons in the collapse of Bose–Einstein condensates with attractive interactions , 2008, 0812.0493.

[10]  M. Ablowitz,et al.  Piston dispersive shock wave problem. , 2007, Physical review letters.

[11]  Bogdan Damski.  Formation of shock waves in a Bose-Einstein condensate (8 pages) , 2004 .

[12]  C. Adams,et al.  Pressure Drag in Linear and Nonlinear Quantum Fluids , 1998, cond-mat/9812080.

[14]  F. Dalfovo,et al.  Theory of Bose-Einstein condensation in trapped gases , 1998, cond-mat/9806038.

[15]  H. Smith,et al.  Bose–Einstein Condensation in Dilute Gases: Contents , 2001 .

[16]  S. Adhikari.  Dynamics of collapsing and exploding Bose–Einstein condensate , 2002, cond-mat/0201586.

[17]  C. Savage,et al.  Collapsing Bose-Einstein condensates beyond the Gross-Pitaevskii approximation , 2004, cond-mat/0412041.

[18]  D. Wiersma,et al.  Bose-Einstein condensate in a random potential. , 2004, Physical review letters.

[19]  I Coddington,et al.  Observations on sound propagation in rapidly rotating Bose-Einstein condensates. , 2005, Physical review letters.

[20]  Randall G. Hulet,et al.  Formation and propagation of matter-wave soliton trains , 2002, Nature.

[21]  Víctor M Pérez-García,et al.  Feshbach resonance induced shock waves in Bose-Einstein condensates. , 2004, Physical review letters.

[22]  Large atom number Bose-Einstein condensate of sodium. , 2006, The Review of scientific instruments.

[23]  R. Scott,et al.  Incoherence of Bose-Einstein condensates at supersonic speeds due to quantum noise , 2008, 0810.5687.

[24]  N. Robins,et al.  Bose-Einstein condensate collapse: a comparison between theory and experiment , 2002, cond-mat/0207308.

[25]  W. Ketterle,et al.  Direct, Nondestructive Observation of a Bose Condensate , 1996, Science.

[26]  C. Pethick,et al.  Bose–Einstein Condensation in Dilute Gases: Contents , 2008 .

[27]  I. Coddington,et al.  Dispersive and classical shock waves in Bose-Einstein condensates and gas dynamics , 2006 .

[28]  Zachary Dutton,et al.  Observation of Quantum Shock Waves Created with Ultra- Compressed Slow Light Pulses in a Bose-Einstein Condensate , 2001, Science.

[29]  R. Ballagh,et al.  SOLITARY-WAVE SOLUTIONS TO NONLINEAR SCHRODINGER EQUATIONS , 1997 .

[30]  Frisch,et al.  Transition to dissipation in a model of superflow. , 1992, Physical review letters.

[31]  Castin,et al.  Bose-Einstein Condensates in Time Dependent Traps. , 1996, Physical review letters.

[32]  Carl E. Wieman,et al.  Dynamics of collapsing and exploding Bose–Einstein condensates , 2001, Nature.

[33]  L. Salasnich,et al.  Effective wave equations for the dynamics of cigar-shaped and disk-shaped Bose condensates , 2002 .

[34]  C. Salomon,et al.  Formation of a Matter-Wave Bright Soliton , 2002, Science.

[35]  Quantum Depletion Of Collapsing Bose-Einstein Condensates , 2006, cond-mat/0609417.

[36]  Quantum turbulence and correlations in Bose-Einstein condensate collisions (18 pages) , 2006, cond-mat/0602061.

[37]  U Al Khawaja,et al.  Bright soliton trains of trapped Bose-Einstein condensates. , 2002, Physical review letters.