Transport and Disruption of Bose-Einstein Condensates

University of Nottingham

3.30pm, Friday 10 December 2004, AR103 Seminar Room, Graduate Research Centre

I present theoretical and experimental studies of the dynamics of Bose-Einstein condensates. I examine their behaviour in optical lattices, undergoing reflection from a hard wall, and on collision with other condensates. For low atom densities and fast acceleration, the condensates perform regular oscillations, and their centre-of-mass closely follows semiclassical single-particle trajectories. But in other regimes, the centre-of-mass motion disrupts the internal structure of the condensate by generating solitons and vortex rings, which can trigger explosive expansion of the atom cloud.

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