Darmstadt 2008 – scientific programme

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 18: Ultracold atoms II (jointly with Q)

A 18.3: Talk

Thursday, March 13, 2008, 09:00–09:15, 2F

Observation of dark soliton oscillations in a harmonic trap — •Andreas Weller, Christian Groß, Jens Philipp Ronzheimer, Jerome Esteve, and Markus K. Oberthaler — Kirchhoff Institut für Physik, Universität Heidelberg

We experimentally create dark solitons in a Bose Einstein Condensate confined in a harmonic optical dipole trap by releasing atoms from a double well potential into a harmonic potential. The two clouds collide and form a dark soliton train. We observe the consequent dynamics (oscillations) with a novel imaging system. Furthermore we confirm that the oscillation frequency deviates from the harmonic trapping frequency and is close to the prediction of the one dimensional Gross Pitaevskii Equation (GPE): ω_ds=ω_trap/ √2. The deviations are consistent with the results obtained by integration of the three dimensional GPE.

We will further discuss the status of the experiment creating intrinsically localized modes and bright solitons by starting with a single occupied well in an optical lattice.