Abstract
We study experimentally the transverse monopole mode of an elongated rubidium condensate. Because of the scaling invariance of the nonlinear Schrödinger (Gross-Pitaevskii) equation, the oscillation is monochromatic and sinusoidal at short times, even under strong excitation. For ultralow temperatures, the quality factor can exceed 2000, where and are the mode angular frequency and damping rate. This value is much larger than any previously reported for other eigenmodes of a condensate. We also present the temperature variation of and .
- Received 23 November 2001
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.88.250402
©2002 American Physical Society