Decay mechanisms of superflow of Bose-Einstein condensates in ring traps

Masaya Kunimi and Ippei Danshita
Phys. Rev. A 99, 043613 – Published 11 April 2019

Abstract

We study the supercurrent decay of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a ring trap combined with a repulsive barrier potential. In recent experiments, Kumar et al. [Phys. Rev. A 95, 021602(R) (2017)] have measured the dependence of the decay rate on the temperature and the barrier strength. However, the origin of the decay observed in the experiment remains unclear. We calculate the rate of supercurrent decay due to thermally activated phase slips (TAPS) by using the Kramers formula based on the Gross-Pitaevskii mean-field theory. The resulting decay rate is astronomically small compared to that measured in the experiment, thus excluding the possibility of TAPS as the decay mechanism. Alternatively, we argue that three-body losses can be relevant to the observed decay and predict that one can observe supercurrent decay via TAPS by decreasing the number of atoms.

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  • Received 4 February 2019

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.99.043613

©2019 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Atomic, Molecular & OpticalCondensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Masaya Kunimi* and Ippei Danshita

  • Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan

  • *masaya.kunimi@yukawa.kyoto-u.ac.jp
  • Present address: Department of Physics, Kindai University, Higashi-Osaka, Osaka 577-8502, Japan.

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Issue

Vol. 99, Iss. 4 — April 2019

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