Excitation of a Bose-Einstein condensate: A Pedagogical Experiment on quantum states change
Abstract
In this work, we have used a 87Rb Bose-Einstein condensate to study the effects of electrical noise, embedded into the magnetic trap field, on the atomic population distribution spread over different quantum states of the confining potential. The noisy external field comes from unwanted fluctuations taking place in the electronic stabilization control circuit for the electric current flowing through the magnetic trap coils, which operate at frequencies close to that of the trapping potential. We will show that these small electric fluctuations are able to couple adjacent vibrational levels of the potential resulting in the population spread, which was initially pure, over a manifold of nearby states. This reduces the lifetime of the trapped condensate and also increase the average temperature of the system, as the population diffuses towards the upper energy levels. The results were modeled via ladder transitions, and directly compared to the experimental results, and were found to be in good agreement. We believe that this theoretical-experimental study is didactic, as it allows for the freshmen students to observe macroscopic quantum effects taking place on experimental physical systems.
Read the paper
Related studies
- Chaos and quantum thermalization
- The Dalton quantum chemistry program system
- Cord Blood Leptin and Adiponectin as Predictors of Adiposity in Children at 3 Years of Age: A Prospective Cohort Study
- Quantitative metabolomics by H-NMR and LC-MS/MS confirms altered metabolic pathways in diabetes
- Stable adiabatic quantum batteries
- A novel self-lipid antigen targets human T cells against CD1c(+) leukemias
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.