Heidelberg 2015 – scientific programme

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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik

Q 27: Quantum Gases: Bosons IV

Q 27.5: Talk

Tuesday, March 24, 2015, 15:30–15:45, P/H2

Decay of dark solitary like wave phenomena in a disk shaped Bose-Einstein Condensate — •Nadine Meyer, Harry Proud, Marisa Perea, Charlotte O'Neale, Sebastian Riess, and Kai Bongs — School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, United Kingdom

The nonlinear wave phenomenon of solitons plays an important role in high speed optical communication and energy transport in molecular biology and is one of the fundamental excitations found in Bose-Einstein condensates following the nonlinear Gross-Pitaevski equation.

To our knowlegde we present the first experimental observation of quasi 2D soliton like excitations in a disk shaped Bose-Einstein condensate. The evolution, movement and decay of a dark spatial solitary wave phenomenon confined in an ultracold atomic system will be discussed. By using a spatial light modulator for optical imprinting, the quantum phase of the Bose-Einstein condensate can be arbitrarily engineered. This versatile method gives rise to a nonlinear particle like matterwave pulse where the dispersion of the soliton like excitation is balanced by the repulsive inter atomic interaction. In contrast to formerly performed experiments in elongated BEC traps the soliton like excitation created in the disk shaped Bose-Einstein condensate is dynamically unstable and decays rapidly within a few ms. The collapse observed in the experiment shows an even stronger accelerated decay in comparison to preliminary results of numerical simulations of the GPE. This might be due to thermodynamical instabilities and small anharmonicities in the trapping potential.