Combinatorial Solutions to Normal Ordering of Bosons

We present a combinatorial method of constructing solutions to the normal ordering of boson operators. Generalizations of standard combinatorial notions - the Stirling and Bell numbers, Bell polynomials and Dobinski relations - lead to calculational tools which allow to find explicitly normally ordered forms for a large class of operator functions.Comment: Presented at 14th Int. Colloquium on Integrable Systems, Prague, Czech Republic, 16-18 June 2005. 6 pages, 11 reference

Emergence of a turbulent cascade in a quantum gas.

A central concept in the modern understanding of turbulence is the existence of cascades of excitations from large to small length scales, or vice versa. This concept was introduced in 1941 by Kolmogorov and Obukhov, and such cascades have since been observed in various systems, including interplanetary plasmas, supernovae, ocean waves and financial markets. Despite much progress, a quantitative understanding of turbulence remains a challenge, owing to the interplay between many length scales that makes theoretical simulations of realistic experimental conditions difficult. Here we observe the emergence of a turbulent cascade in a weakly interacting homogeneous Bose gas-a quantum fluid that can be theoretically described on all relevant length scales. We prepare a Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical box, drive it out of equilibrium with an oscillating force that pumps energy into the system at the largest length scale, study its nonlinear response to the periodic drive, and observe a gradual development of a cascade characterized by an isotropic power-law distribution in momentum space. We numerically model our experiments using the Gross-Pitaevskii equation and find excellent agreement with the measurements. Our experiments establish the uniform Bose gas as a promising new medium for investigating many aspects of turbulence, including the interplay between vortex and wave turbulence, and the relative importance of quantum and classical effects.This work was supported by AFOSR, ARO, DARPA OLE, EPSRC (Grant No. EP/N011759/1) and ERC (QBox). The GeForce GTX TITAN X used for the numerical simulations was donated by the NVIDIA Corporation. N.N. and A.L.G. acknowledge support from Trinity College, Cambridge; R.P.S. acknowledges support from the Royal Society.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Nature Publishing Group via https://doi.org/10.1038/nature2011

Quantum gases. Critical dynamics of spontaneous symmetry breaking in a homogeneous Bose gas.

Kibble-Zurek theory models the dynamics of spontaneous symmetry breaking, which plays an important role in a wide variety of physical contexts, ranging from cosmology to superconductors. We explored these dynamics in a homogeneous system by thermally quenching an atomic gas with short-range interactions through the Bose-Einstein phase transition. Using homodyne matter-wave interferometry to measure first-order correlation functions, we verified the central quantitative prediction of the Kibble-Zurek theory, namely the homogeneous-system power-law scaling of the coherence length with the quench rate. Moreover, we directly confirmed its underlying hypothesis, the freezing of the correlation length near the transition. Our measurements agree with a beyond-mean-field theory and support the expectation that the dynamical critical exponent for this universality class is z = 3/2.We thank M. Robert-de-Saint-Vincent for experimental assistance; R. Fletcher for comments on the manuscript; and N. Cooper, J. Dalibard, G. Ferrari, B. Phillips, and W. Zwerger for insightful discussions. This work was supported by AFOSR, ARO, DARPA OLE, and EPSRC (grant no. EP/K003615/1). N.N. acknowledges support from Trinity College, Cambridge, and R.P.S. from the Royal Society.This is the accepted manuscript of a paper published in Science, 9 January 2015, Vol. 347, no. 6218 pp. 167-170 DOI: 10.1126/science.125867

Dobiński relations and ordering of boson operators

We introduce a generalization of the Dobiński relation, through which we define a family of Bell-type numbers and polynomials. Such generalized Dobiński relations are coherent state matrix elements of expressions involving boson ladder operators. This may be used in order to obtain normally ordered forms of polynomials in creation and annihilation operators, both if the latter satisfy canonical and deformed commutation relations

Metastability in spin polarised Fermi gases and quasiparticle decays

We investigate the metastability associated with the first order transition from normal to superfluid phases in the phase diagram of two-component polarised Fermi gases.We begin by detailing the dominant decay processes of single quasiparticles.Having determined the momentum thresholds of each process and calculated their rates, we apply this understanding to a Fermi sea of polarons by linking its metastability to the stability of individual polarons, and predicting a region of metastability for the normal partially polarised phase. In the limit of a single impurity, this region extends from the interaction strength at which a polarised phase of molecules becomes the groundstate, to the one at which the single quasiparticle groundstate changes character from polaronic to molecular. Our argument in terms of a Fermi sea of polarons naturally suggests their use as an experimental probe. We propose experiments to observe the threshold of the predicted region of metastability, the interaction strength at which the quasiparticle groundstate changes character, and the decay rate of polarons

Elliptic flow in a strongly interacting normal Bose gas

We study the anisotropic, elliptic expansion of a thermal atomic Bose gas released from an anisotropic trapping potential, for a wide range of interaction strengths across a Feshbach resonance. We show that in our system this hydrodynamic phenomenon is for all interaction strengths fully described by a microscopic kinetic model with no free parameters. The success of this description crucially relies on taking into account the reduced thermalising power of elastic collisions in a strongly interacting gas, for which we derive an analytical theory. We also perform time-resolved measurements that directly reveal the dynamics of the energy transfer between the different expansion axes