Time-varying Bose–Einstein condensates

Abstract

Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs), a state of matter formed when a low-density gas of bosons is cooled to near absolute zero, continue to motivate novel work in theoretical and experimental physics. Although BECs are most commonly studied in stationary ground states, time-varying BECs arise when some aspect of the physics governing the condensate varies as a function of time. We study the evolution of time-varying BECs under non-autonomous Gross–Pitaevskii equations (GPEs) through a mix of theory and numerical experiments. We separately derive a perturbation theory (in the small-parameter limit) and a variational approximation for non-autonomous GPEs on generic bounded space domains. We then explore various routes to obtain time-varying BECs, starting with the more standard techniques of varying the potential, scattering length, or dispersion, and then moving on to more advanced control mechanisms such as moving the external potential well over time to move or even split the BEC cloud. We also describe how to modify a BEC cloud through evolution of the size or curvature of the space domain. Our results highlight a variety of interesting theoretical routes for studying and controlling time-varying BECs, lending a stronger theoretical formulation for existing experiments and suggesting new directions for future investigation.