Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Elastic Scattering Loss of Atoms from Colliding Bose-Einstein Condensate Wave Packets

Published

Author(s)

Y B. Band, M Trippenbach, J P. Burke, Paul S. Julienne

Abstract

Bragg diffraction of atoms by light waves has been used to create high momentum components in a Bose-Einstein condensate. Collisions between atoms from two distinct momentum wavepackets cause elastic scattering that can remove a significant fraction of atoms from the wavepackets and cause the formation of a spherical shell of scattered atoms. This process can not be described by the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. We develop a slowly varying envelope technique for including the effects of this mechanism into the condensate dynamics. Three-dimensional numerical calculations are presented for two experimental situations: passage of a moving daughter condensate through a non-moving parent condensate, and four-wave mixing of matter waves.
Citation
Physical Review Letters
Volume
84
Issue
No. 24

Keywords

Bose-Einstein condensation, elastic scattering, mean-field effects, nonlinear dynamics

Citation

Band, Y. , Trippenbach, M. , Burke, J. and Julienne, P. (2000), Elastic Scattering Loss of Atoms from Colliding Bose-Einstein Condensate Wave Packets, Physical Review Letters (Accessed July 7, 2024)

Issues

If you have any questions about this publication or are having problems accessing it, please contact reflib@nist.gov.

Created May 31, 2000, Updated October 12, 2021