41 research outputs found
Making, probing and understanding Bose-Einstein condensates
Contribution to the proceedings of the 1998 Enrico Fermi summer school on
Bose-Einstein condensation in Varenna, Italy.Comment: Long review paper with ~90 pages, ~20 figures. 2 GIF figures in
separate files (4/5/99 fixed figure
Exotic magnetic orders for high spin ultracold fermions
We study Hubbard models for ultracold bosonic or fermionic atoms loaded into
an optical lattice. The atoms carry a high spin , and interact on site
via strong repulsive Van der Waals forces. Making convenient rearrangements of
the interaction terms, and exploiting their symmetry properties, we derive low
energy effective models with nearest-neighbor interactions, and their
properties. We apply our method to , and 5/2 fermions on two-dimensional
square lattice at quarter, and 1/6 fillings, respectively, and investigate
mean-field equations for repulsive couplings. We find for fermions that
the plaquette state appearing in the highly symmetric SU(4) case does not
require fine tuning, and is stable in an extended region of the phase diagram.
This phase competes with an SU(2) flux state, that is always suppressed for
repulsive interactions in absence of external magnetic field. The SU(2) flux
state has, however, lower energy than the plaquette phase, and stabilizes in
the presence of weak applied magnetic field. For fermions a similar
SU(2) plaquette phase is found to be the ground state without external magnetic
field.Comment: final version, 6 pages, 4 figures, epl forma
All Optical Formation of an Atomic Bose-Einstein Condensate
We have created a Bose-Einstein condensate of 87Rb atoms directly in an
optical trap. We employ a quasi-electrostatic dipole force trap formed by two
crossed CO_2 laser beams. Loading directly from a sub-doppler laser-cooled
cloud of atoms results in initial phase space densities of ~1/200.
Evaporatively cooling through the BEC transition is achieved by lowering the
power in the trapping beams over ~ 2 s. The resulting condensates are F=1
spinors with 3.5 x 10^4 atoms distributed between the m_F = (-1,0,1) states.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let
Periodically-dressed Bose-Einstein condensates: a superfluid with an anisotropic and variable critical velocity
Two intersecting laser beams can produce a spatially-periodic coupling
between two components of an atomic gas and thereby modify the dispersion
relation of the gas according to a dressed-state formalism. Properties of a
Bose-Einstein condensate of such a gas are strongly affected by this
modification. A Bogoliubov transformation is presented which accounts for
interparticle interactions to obtain the quasiparticle excitation spectrum in
such a condensate. The Landau critical velocity is found to be anisotropic and
can be widely tuned by varying properties of the dressing laser beams.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Strongly enhanced inelastic collisions in a Bose-Einstein condensate near Feshbach resonances
The properties of Bose-Einstein condensed gases can be strongly altered by
tuning the external magnetic field near a Feshbach resonance. Feshbach
resonances affect elastic collisions and lead to the observed modification of
the scattering length. However, as we report here, this is accompanied by a
strong increase in the rate of inelastic collisions. The observed three-body
loss rate in a sodium Bose-Einstein condensation increased when the scattering
length was tuned to both larger or smaller values than the off-resonant value.
This observation and the maximum measured increase of the loss rate by several
orders of magnitude are not accounted for by theoretical treatments. The strong
losses impose severe limitations for using Feshbach resonances to tune the
properties of Bose-Einstein condensates. A new Feshbach resonance in sodium at
1195 G was observed.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Enhancement and suppression of spontaneous emission and light scattering by quantum degeneracy
Quantum degeneracy modifies light scattering and spontaneous emission. For
fermions, Pauli blocking leads to a suppression of both processes. In contrast,
in a weakly interacting Bose-Einstein condensate, we find spontaneous emission
to be enhanced, while light scattering is suppressed. This difference is
attributed to many-body effects and quantum interference in a Bose-Einstein
condensate.Comment: 4 pages 1 figur