Stuttgart 2012 – scientific programme
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A: Fachverband Atomphysik
A 16: Ultra-cold atoms, ions and BEC I
A 16.2: Talk
Tuesday, March 13, 2012, 14:30–14:45, V7.02
Confinement-Induced collapse of a dipolar Bose-Einstein Condensate in an optical lattice — •Emanuel Henn1, Juliette Billy1, Stefan Müller1, Holger Kadau1, Thomas Maier1, Mathias Schmitt1, Mattia Jona-Lasinio2, Luis Santos2, Axel Griesmaier1, and Tilman Pfau1 — 15.Physikalisches Institut, Universitat Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 57, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany — 2Institut fur Theoretische Physik, Leibniz Universitat Hannover, 30167 Hannover, Germany
We experimentally investigate the collapse of a dipolar Bose-Einstein Condensate (dBEC) in a 1D lattice. In contrast with the standard method of changing the contact interaction energy, the collapse is here induced by a sudden change in the confining potential. Only a dBEC offers this possibility since its stability threshold strongly depends on the lattice depth due to the anisotropic character of the dipolar interaction [1]. For shallow lattices, in the extreme case where the trapping potential is completely switched off, the dBEC collapses during the free expansion, which is also a unique feature of dipolar systems. For deep lattices, structured ground-states are expected to appear. However, strong atom losses and dephasing effects restrict the experimental parameter range. We present here our methods to overcome these limitations and discuss preliminary results.
[1] S. Müller et al., Phys. Rev. A 84, 053601 (2011)