Bound-state signatures in quenched Bose-Einstein condensates

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Abstract

We investigate the dynamics of a homogenous Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) following a sudden quench of the scattering length. Our focus is the time evolution of short-range correlations via the dynamical contact. We compute the dynamics using a combination of two- and many-body models, and we propose an intuitive connection between them that unifies their short-time, short-range predictions. Our two-body models are exactly solvable and, when properly calibrated, lead to analytic formulae for the contact dynamics. Immediately after the quench, the contact exhibits strong oscillations at the frequency of the two-body bound state. These oscillations are large in amplitude, and their time average is typically much larger than the unregularized Bogoliubov prediction. The condensate fraction shows similar oscillations, whose amplitude we are able to estimate. These results demonstrate the importance of including the bound state in descriptions of diabatically-quenched BEC experiments.

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Atom--Molecule Coherence in a Bose-Einstein Condensate

Carl E. Wieman, Elizabeth A. Donley, Sarah T. Thompson … (2002)

Coherent coupling between atoms and molecules in a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) has been observed. Oscillations between atomic and molecular states were excited by sudden changes in the magnetic field near a Feshbach resonance and persisted for many periods of the oscillation. The oscillation frequency was measured over a large range of magnetic fields and is in excellent quantitative agreement with the energy difference between the colliding atom threshold energy and the energy of the bound molecular state. This agreement indicates that we have created a quantum superposition of atoms and diatomic molecules, which are chemically different species.

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Microscopic observation of magnon bound states and their dynamics

Takeshi Fukuhara, Sebastian Hild, Manuel Endres … (2013)

More than eighty years ago, H. Bethe pointed out the existence of bound states of elementary spin waves in one-dimensional quantum magnets. To date, identifying signatures of such magnon bound states has remained a subject of intense theoretical research while their detection has proved challenging for experiments. Ultracold atoms offer an ideal setting to reveal such bound states by tracking the spin dynamics after a local quantum quench with single-spin and single-site resolution. Here we report on the direct observation of two-magnon bound states using in-situ correlation measurements in a one-dimensional Heisenberg spin chain realized with ultracold bosonic atoms in an optical lattice. We observe the quantum walk of free and bound magnon states through time-resolved measurements of the two spin impurities. The increased effective mass of the compound magnon state results in slower spin dynamics as compared to single magnon excitations. In our measurements, we also determine the decay time of bound magnons, which is most likely limited by scattering on thermal fluctuations in the system. Our results open a new pathway for studying fundamental properties of quantum magnets and, more generally, properties of interacting impurities in quantum many-body systems.

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From Cosmology to Cold Atoms: Observation of Sakharov Oscillations in Quenched Atomic Superfluids

Cheng Chin, Victor Gurarie, Chen-Lung Hung (2012)

Sakharov oscillations, conventionally discussed in the context of early universe evolution and the anisotropy of cosmic microwave background radiation, is the manifestation of interfering acoustic waves synchronously generated in an ideal fluid. Here we report the laboratory demonstration of Sakharov oscillations in a quenched atomic superfluid. We quench the sample by Feshbach tuning and monitor the subsequent density fluctuations at different time and length scales by in situ imaging. Sakharov oscillations are identified as the multi-peak structure in the atomic density power spectrum, resembling that of the cosmic microwave background. We also observe Sakharov oscillations in the time domain, from which we extract the energy dispersion of the superfluid, and determine the sonic horizon of the excitations.